In 2007, the concept of common service centres was mooted to take e-governance to rural India. But lack of initiatives from States forced service providers like Sahaj to use this facility for other activities such as mobile recharge centres and kiosk banking.

Now the Srei-associate company, Sahaj, is looking to leverage its huge network of 38,000 such centres — called Mitr services — in 25 States for physical retailing of consumables, deploy business correspondents (BCs), sell insurance products and offer collection centres to e-tailers.

Nearly ₹350 crore has gone into setting up the rural infrastructure.

“We have re-branded the common service centres as Sahaj Mitr and expanded to rural areas in 19 other States with the ‘Sahaj Mitr’ brand. The rural franchise operators will now offer one-stop solution in these remote areas,” Santosh Dash, Chief Executive Officer, Sahaj, told BusinessLine .

Of the 38,000 rural franchises (or service centres), nearly 27,000 are set up in six States — West Bengal, parts of Bihar and Odisha, almost half of Uttar Pradesh, four districts of Tamil Nadu, and Assam — as common service centres, under government mandate.

The remaining 11,000 have come up over the last six months, as the company seeks to turn profitable and expand its bouquet of services from just a G2C (government to consumer) service provider; to a one-stop solution provider in rural areas.

Sahaj will continue e-governance (or G2C) services in the six States which were its initial focus. Adding on to that is the BC model for all centres. Sahaj has already got the mandate from various banks that include State Bank of India, Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Central Bank of India. All these centres, which are connected real time, will provide 33 different services that include basic account opening, recurring deposits, fixed deposits and so on.

Sahaj has also tied up with companies such as Tata AIA and Reliance to market their offerings (life and non-life). More tie-ups are being worked out.

“In India the assisted sales model works very well. People open up to those who they know. And considering that the rural franchisees are local people and they are known in the area, we can leverage them for selling insurance products,” Dash added.

Other Services

But the evolution doesn’t stop here. Sahaj is willing to foray into the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) segment too.

It is in the process of tying up with distributors of FMCG majors like ITC, Reckitt Benckiser and Reliance at the sub-divisional / tehsil levels. They would act as ‘Param Mitrs’ and supply items to the Mitrs (village level entrepreneurs).

Also on cards are tie-ups with e-commerce majors to act as their delivery centres in the rural areas.

Viability

All these plans, according to Dash, are steps towards making Sahaj a profitable and sustainable enterprise.

“We are hopeful of reporting profits this year. At least we will be EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) positive,” Dash said.

The focus is also on expanding the village level entrepreneurs network by over 300 per cent to 120,000 by 2018.

Capital raising plans may also be explored, Dash said, without disclosing details.

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