Talking Job Vending Machine for Illiterate Labourers/Villagers

Mathukathe

Talking Job Vending Machine for Illiterate Labourers/Villagers

Contact Solution Provider

Nandan Rajan
Mathukathe
Bangalore
560003
India
nan.rajan@gmail.com

Solution Overview & Benefits

Mathukathe is an adapter kit for smartphones/PC that allows illiterate villagers with no schooling to find jobs, learn of development opportunities and provide feedback on welfare. It can be thought of as a hybrid ATM, coin phone device. One device can serve an entire village.

Instead of a regular keypad which is useless to illiterates here two colored buttons (connect, skip) are used similar to a tape recorder

Instead of a screen which illiterates cannot read here the machine speaks to the user in their native tongue.

Just like an ATM card s used to identify a user, here a similar card is used to identify a user and provide information specific to the user.In that sense it is a shared personal phone. currently, a job card is used to identify a job rather than a specific user and it is barcode based but that is more for ease of operation and explaination.

Instead of contact information being stored as name and phone number, here a descriptive audio clip represents the contact. For example instead of storing an employer's name a job description is used to represent the employer since its the job that connects the employer and illiterate job seeker.

This a full fledged illiterate phone with multiple other uses: remote surveys among illiterates, remote 1-1 mentoring, street vendor sales leads. Please press articles linked to website for more information (in particular thinkChangeIndia article)

Contact management is different than in a regular phone: instead of searching contacts by spelling them here they are played out as a list similar to a song list and navigated by the two buttons. The network participates in contact management since this is an area where illiterates are really handicapped.

History & Development

Mathuakathe is developed in Bangalore, India and has been on trial in a few sites in Bangalore. Various media publications have covered Mathukathe: SmartPlanet, Slashgear, Times of India Crest Edition, Bangalore Mirror, Deccan Chronicle. Media links available on the website.

Availability

Publicly available: yes
Countries where available: Worldwide
Available online: yes
Offered or can be licensed for local manufacture: yes
Countries where spare parts can be purchased: Worldwide

Specifications

Dimensions: 22cmx9cmx11cm
Weight: 2kg

Additional Information