SREI Sahaj e-Village, a division of SREI Infrastructure Finance Ltd, has decided to invest Rs 10 billion on rural IT infrastructure.

The project includes the establishment of 25,000 common service centers (CSCs) across six states comprising West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.  

The CSCs would connect the rustic regions with the whole world and offer up all necessary services demanded by them.

Mr. Hemant Kanoria, chairman & managing director, SREI, said, “The implementation has already begun in West Bengal, Bihar and Tamil Nadu and within the end of next year all these 25,000 centers would be operational.”

Under a unique model formulated by the company people would be empowered at the operating level. Around 25,000 enterprisers would run these centers and they in turn would generate direct employment of another 75,000 persons in the rural areas.

The VLE or the village level entrepreneur will run the CSCs, which would offer a range of services such as program, and facilities that the government would provide in the rural areas like birth certificates, land records among others. SREI Sahaj would add the e-commerce and e-learning products to makes it remunerative for the village level entrepreneur.
 
Sabahat Azim, CEO, SREI Sahaj e-Village, stated, “Our plan is to expand to other states and cover a large part of the country through our rural partnership approach. It is a mammoth task, but in our one year of trial, we are convinced that we can achieve our target.”

At 1:41 p.m, the shares of SREI Infra gained Rs 2.05 to trade at Rs 144.2 on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). The total volume of shares traded was 16,357.