This Google-backed project uses beacons to help small businesses in one of Asia’s biggest slums to compete with online retailers by alerting smartphone users as they pass by.
Beacons are small, relatively cheap hardware that use Bluetooth connections to transmit messages or prompts to smartphones and tablets. Because they can detect very accurate location data, beacons are often used in innovations looking to deliver hyper-contextual content to users based on their location. Now, a project by Google, the Industrial Design Centre (IDC), the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and Swansea University is using the technology to improve an Indian slum market’s visibility among smartphone users.
At 216 hectares (535 acres), Mumbai’s Dharavi is one of Asia’s largest slums. It has a manufacturing and retail sector worth around $1 billion and deals primarily in leather products, pottery, jewellery and textiles. Under the joint project, the use of beacons in the area enables local manufacturers and designers to send alerts to potential customers walking past, advertising new products, offers and other announcements.
Once mounted on a nearby wall, the beacons can broadcast an alert containing a website URL to anyone with a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone within 9 metres (30 ft). Nearby recipients can then open the link, which will take them to an online marketplace with information on what vendors in the locality are selling. Since many mobile users turn off Bluetooth to conserve battery life on devices, retailers have also been provided with posters that ask consumers to turn their Bluetooth back on so that they can receive the notifications.
The initiative is part of the Google IoT Research Award Pilot, and 100 beacons have been allocated for the project. The first 30 beacons have been designated to leather stores, while the remaining 70 are to be used in Kumbharwada – a century-old, 9-hectare (22-acre) establishment famed for its pottery, housing approximately 1,500 families of whom 700–800 are practising potters today. Researchers will be actively studying the performance of these beacons and the results for five weeks, but shopkeepers will be permitted to keep the devices after the project concludes. The beacons should continue to function for approximately three years in total.
According to Quartz India, the project had a slow uptake initially. During the first two weeks, only 11 beacons were adopted by local vendors, despite a good level of technical literacy in the area and a familiarity with other smartphone communication tools and apps. Chinmay Parab, a master’s student at the IDC who worked on the project, commented, ‘It is taking a bit more time than we expected to convince people, but we expected an inertia to [adopting] any new technology. Most people who might be passing by Dharavi’s leather market might not even know that these markets have such good-quality crafty products. [This technology will give them] digital visibility.’
Some store owners explained that they were content with their existing, loyal customer base, but Parab and other early adopters feel there is a genuine need for the technology, particularly in response to increasing competition from e-commerce giants such as Snapdeal, Flipkart and Amazon.
But perhaps the project’s greatest legacy will be how the slum is perceived in the future. As Parab explains: ‘The economy that runs in parallel in Dharavi is always ignored under this “Asia’s largest slum” image that we all have. We’re attempting to give Dharavi, even though on a small scale, a new identity of being a digital hub.’
__TAKEAWAYS
Website: www.developers.google.com/beacons/
Contact: www.twitter.com/Google
Innovation name: Google beacons
Country: India
Industries: Retail & e-commerce / Telecoms & mobile