How Nokia Aims To Build A Digitally-integrated Village Ecosystem

As a telecommunications technology leader, Nokia is committed to providing the benefits of broadband connectivity to empower communities and prepare India for a digital future. Nokia’s Smartpur project aims to create a sustainable ecosystem where community members can leverage digital tools to bring efficiency in daily lives, transparency in governance, economic prosperity for households, and ease of access to various government services and information. By focusing on digitally enabled inclusion, Nokia is making villages self-reliant to fulfil the vision of a digital India. Nokia, in association with Republic Media Network, presents 'Nokia Speeding India Ahead.' The series highlights the role of Nokia in accelerating growth & development in the Indian telecom sector.

The second episode of the series had an esteemed guest panel from across sectors:  Dr. Dinesh Tyagi, Chief Executive Officer at CSC E-Governance Services India Limited, Shantanu Chakroborty, Deputy Director Program Save the Children; Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, Founder Chairman & Senior Consultant Cardiac Surgeon at Narayana Health; Saguna Vaid, Director for Legal & Compliance and Board Member of CSR Committee at Nokia India and Amit Marwah, Head of Marketing & Corporate Affairs at Nokia India;  Each of the panelists shared insight on how technology can be a great enabler of all-inclusive socio-economic growth .

“Today, it is not about technologies giving efficiency to save time, but it is about actually enabling life using technology & connectivity. Today, our schools & colleges are at home. My bank is at home; my office is at home; my shopping is at home; my cinema hall is at home. That is the power of digital transformation, and I think we have discovered this exceptionally well." says Amit Marwah, Head of Marketing & Corporate Affairs at Nokia India, while addressing the subject of how COVID-19 has accelerated technological advancements throughout the country.

" We'd heard a lot about smart cities; we thought, why not smart villages? And that's how we came up with the idea of Smartpur. At Smartpur, we set up centres that are digitally enabled; they run on the internet & are typically around the community centres. We provide many services from the centre, which helps the entire village per se. We started with a pilot. When we got a good response, we decided to scale it up." says Saguna Vaid, Director for Legal & Compliance and Board Member of CSR Committee at Nokia India.

While highlighting the objectives behind the Smartpur Project undertaken by Nokia, she further adds, " The Smartpur Project is touching lives across five pillars, healthcare, education, livelihood, e-governance & finance. We provide numerous services under these five pillars. The fundamentals have been set up & we will keep growing our services under them as we go forward & keep enhancing Nokia's social impact". The entire episode provided insight into how digital connectivity can impact communities' lives and livelihoods to help them access services and social entitlements more efficiently, foster financial inclusion, and enable socio-economic growth for a more self-reliant India.