Grassroot innovation enabling 4G/5G services on ultra-low-cost feature phones

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00:00:08 ADITYA NATH JHA
Welcome to this edition of India Means Innovation, where we discuss the technologically complex innovations coming out of India. Today we have with us Amar Rao, Engineering Project Manager in the High Tech division with Quest Global. Quest Global is an engineering services partner to the leading companies of the world. Welcome, Amar.

00:00:37 AMAR RAO
Thank you so much.

00:00:38 ADITYA NATH JHA
Before we go into this beautiful innovation that you're going to talk about, let me tell the viewers it has to do something with the mobile phones.

00:00:47 AMAR RAO
Exactly.

00:00:48 ADITYA NATH JHA
And mobile phones have become integral to everyone's lives. Yet there is a very stark digital divide. Not everyone has got a smartphone. In fact, hundreds of millions of people in India, probably billions across the world, don't have access to smartphones. Can you tell us about the feature phones that you're working on?

00:01:16 AMAR RAO
Thanks for setting up the context for this. So we have this millions of people who are deprived of all these 4G5G technologies. To take an example, you may think of digital payments, you may talk of audio streaming, you may talk of video streaming. So these services are not available on these phones. Digital payment being such an important thing where lot of people are using it, but unfortunately these people are deprived of it. So what we have done is we have taken these kinds of 4G5G technologies onto the feature phone.

00:01:45 ADITYA NATH JHA
A feature phone that costs ₹1000.

00:01:48 AMAR RAO
Sub ₹1000.

00:01:49 ADITYA NATH JHA
$15 where typically would be a 2G functionality? Yes. And you are offering 4G and 5G functionality on $15 handset, that's correct. Can they do digital payments on them?

00:02:05 AMAR RAO
They can.

00:02:06 ADITYA NATH JHA
They can watch video streaming.

00:02:09 AMAR RAO
True, yeah.

00:02:10 ADITYA NATH JHA
They can hear audio streaming.

00:02:11 AMAR RAO
Exactly, Yeah.

00:02:13 ADITYA NATH JHA
And how did you manage this? What's the technology innovation behind this?

00:02:18 AMAR RAO
So if you look at a typical feature phone platform, right, I mean, they don't come with very high memory and processing capabilities. So you have restrictions on memory. So what we did was when we started developing this app. So there was a threshold that was provided. OK, So your app cannot consume memory beyond this threshold, right? So there's lot of coding guidelines that we have to put up, lot of memory optimizations that we have to do, OK. And if being this low end platform, you cannot afford to have an high end language on it, right? You cannot have the Javas of the world working on it. So you have to use a low end language like CC.

00:02:59 ADITYA NATH JHA
You talked about feature phones having very, very little processing power, so how did you solve that problem?

00:03:07 AMAR RAO
So one challenge with respect to this is there is no on device debugging. The best debug that is available is print up statements as you said, essentially means that you need to have top touch programmers along with you. I mean, I mean we are working on very low end code, not which many people are working on South. You need to derive solutions for any issues that you are facing. Any component that takes memory, it could be as simple as say an image that you are displaying right? It has to be at the most optimized level of memory, right? You need to have a compressed format available for it, and you need to compress it in such a manner that it takes as much as less memory as possible.

00:03:44 ADITYA NATH JHA
You know some of the best work everyone says is done when you have lots of constraints? Exactly. But can it be done in the local language?

00:03:51 AMAR RAO
OK. So what we have done is we have customized the phone to support vernacular languages. Suppose you the user is in Gujarat and he is comfortable using the Gujarati language. He can change the language of the phone to Gujarati and all the menu items, everything, all the communication that happens to him happens in that language. And not only that, we have also customized in terms of the content that he is wanting to listen to or see.

00:04:18 ADITYA NATH JHA
So for digital payment as well as movies, everything it is in his or her language, yes. What about updates?

00:04:25 AMAR RAO
So that's the good part of it. I mean, if you buy this phone, it's not that you're tied to this for your life. We have this technology called Photo firmware update over there, which is standard technology that is used in Android phones as well, through which you can actually send updates to the phones that are in the market. And using Photo, we ensure that the users are kept updated with the latest version of the apps and also get newer apps as and when they are.

00:04:49 ADITYA NATH JHA
Released How many such phones are out in the market 40?

00:04:53 AMAR RAO
Million plus.

00:04:54 ADITYA NATH JHA
40 million plus are improving their quality of life. You know you are bringing good things into their otherwise stuff life.

00:05:03 AMAR RAO
Yeah, Let me take an example here. OK, So you talked about digital payments. So digital payments are not available on feature phones at all. So this is an exciting new technology for them, right? I mean, they were deprived of all this till down, but now they are actually on the digital payment bandwagon. They can make payments, they can send money, their loud ones, wherever they are available. The video streaming app you just open, there's a playlist available for the user. He clicks on the playlist, all the latest news, latest cricket matches or clicks on it. He can watch it then and there.

00:05:35 ADITYA NATH JHA
Wonderful. This is a great example of India means innovation, you know, changing the life of people at the bottom of the pyramid on feature phones with 4G5G features on a $15 handset, right? Wonderful and look forward to you taking it global.

00:05:57 AMAR RAO
Thank you so much.