The rural populations are usually portrayed as a place which is meant only for agriculture. However, linking rural areas to various markets, infrastructure, and appropriate technology can improve their lifestyle, income and can lead to thriving many businesses in these regions. A company named as “Ourtrip” started with a theme “Small is the way to think big” where they aimed to provide money transfer services in the rural areas. Mohan Ballani and Madhu Krishna launched their venture on 30th July 2014. They initially started their company with travel & utility payments services targeting the rural populations.
Opportunities and Challenges
There is a huge market for money remittance services in the rural areas and some parts of cities where people migrate from different parts of the country for a source of earning. The rural areas offer a unique combination of the talent pool, lower operational cost and expansion opportunities at an affordable cost, however, on the side, there is a need for educating retailers and customers about new opportunities available in the market. All the existing travel portals usually don’t concentrate on the rural population as it requires a lot of training and shows a weak demand for financial services.
In response to this challenge – Ourtrip brings services to meet the financial needs of rural communities and also shows a ray of hope to families who have no other accesses to financial services. They started their venture by training the agents to achieve confidence in their services. Explaining Portal and its benefits to rural people was a challenge as they were unaware of the IT development in these areas. They started with a small outlet to building multi-tier distribution network. They made social media usage, coordinated with corporates, theaters and mass media to promote their services. Currently, they are more focused on banking and finance and along services of travel & utility payments.
Ourtrip is committed to create value for customers by being the nearest financial services provider. They have an agent network of 1831 spread across South India demonstrating its penetration and supporting the demand of all sections of the society at a lower cost with fair and transparency. They are working On a daily basis, they provide more than 20,000 people with access to affordable financial services and other related services. Money remittance can be done 24/7, 365 days; the customer does not require any documents to send the money to the beneficiary. They are pricing 0.5 % per each transaction, which is less as compared to the banks & other competitors in the market. The retail network partners offer thousands of retailers an opportunity to earn extra money by driving financial inclusion in India. With Ourtrip services, they are providing access to the unbanked populations in the country. In an emerging country like India, having a proper delivery system and information sharing mechanism can help in promotion of financial inclusion especially banking the unbanked.
Dreams and Aspirations
The company is established to realize the Great Indian Dream of improving the standard of life of every aspiring Indian. They aim to provide a safe and convenient solution to use cash for online purchases. They were able to tap around 123 crores for the year of 2016-2017. They will be launching bwallet in the month of September, which is expected to be the most advanced and highly secure digital payments system associated with leading private bank in India. They have kept a target of doing 200 crores in the next six months. By 2020 they have set a target of 1000 crores turnover and the addition of 5000 agent network. Ourtrip is playing a crucial role in providing banking facilities with appropriate technologies to improve the livelihood of people in an easy and seamless manner.