Organizing the Unorganized – Employing IT to Empower the Under-privileged

摘要

Various sectors in developing countries are typically dominated by the presence of a large number of small and microbusinesses that operate in an informal, unorganized manner. Many of these are single person run micro-businesses and cannot a.ord to buy and maintain their own IT infrastructure. For others, easy availability of cheap labour provides a convenient alternative even though it results in ine.ciency, as little or no records are maintained, and only manual, paper-based processes are followed. This results in high response times for customers, no formal accountability and higher charges. For the businesses this translates to lower earnings and losses due to ine.ciencies. In this paper, we look at few such micro-business segments and explore their current models of operation, while identifying existing ine.ciencies and pain points. We build upon the findings and propose an approach for delivering bene.ts of IT solutions to such micro-business segments. Finally, we present technology that realizes the proposed approach in the specific context of two such segments.