Mahindra and Mahindra Finance-MFConnect 3000

MMFSL has a huge client base in rural India, which is scattered across

several remote areas. This made money collection difficult for the company, more

so as 80 percent of the total collection is done in cash. Traditionally, it sent

collection agents to rural areas to collected the money and generated

handwritten receipts. However, this method had quite a few issues- updating of

data was slow and there was no way to monitor the performance of the collectors,

in terms of number of visits or amount of collection in a day.

The company now provides handheld devices to all its collectors. These

devices are connected to the central server over GPRS. The handheld device looks

like the card swap machines in shops, the only difference being that these

devices are not wired and have a 2.5 db antenna to connect with the GSM network.

Each device also has a thermal printer, which generates two copies of the

receipt after the collection is made. One copy is given to the customer and the

other is kept with the collector for further reference. Immediately after the

receipt is generated, the device dials to the central server and uploads the

transaction data. The company calls it 'near real time data entry', because

sometimes, non availability of GSM connectivity delays updating of data.

However, the device is intelligent enough to dial out and update the data when

it comes to an area with connectivity. The device has been developed by

Bangalore-based Vision tech and it runs on an embedded Linux OS.

	Project Specs Business problem: Cash collection from rural customers IT solution: Linux-based handheld devices that uses GPRS to upload information to central server and print receipts for the customer instantly Impact: Banking at your doorstep in rural areas. The company doesn't have to setup branches in remote areas. IT Implementation partner:VisionTech
Suresh A Shanmugam, National Head, Information Systems & Technology

Post deployment, the company claims that its collectors can actually work as

a mobile branch, as they can pull and push any data from the central server;

they are able to do most of the tasks that were previously done only from the

branches.