The promoters of the Chennai-based Spartek group have finalised a Rs 120-crore project, CyberGrameen, a rural broadband venture that aims to be an IT convergence hub in the heart of rural India.
CyberGrameen will be managed by the non-profit Swarna Bharat Trust set up by the Spartek promoters, the Tripuraneni family, in association with world leaders in broadband technologies with presence in over 60 countries worldwide.
CyberGrameen has already tied up with NextAge BroadBand for high speed wireless connectivity.
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According to the trust chairman, Krishnaprasad Tripuraneni, Cyber Grameen will make available a range of applications and services from entertainment to information; agro-based service to banking and insurance and FMCG services to citizen-related services of the government.
All of these will stimulate village growth prospects and act as a driver to the tradtional projects currently being undertaken by the government and NGO ( non-government organisation) agencies.
Each vllage will be wireless connected to the Internet broadband backbone, making available a whole range of applications and services that accelerate the village growth prospects. Each CyberGrameen will be managed by the participating business partner.
The first pilot CyberGrameen will be launched tomorrow at Venkatachalam village in Nellore district. Initially, it will be grounded in 70 to 100 villages in select districts in AP and will later be extended to the entire state, based on the experience gained.
According to the promoters, currently the village sarpanch is loooked up to for guidance and advice.
But under their concept, the business partner of the CyberGrameen in that village will emerge as the