"Internet is growing in leaps and bounds, and we at iNablers enable the common man to access it" - Y B Ramakrishna, COO, iNablers.

iNablers has a global vision. It is committed to give high quality service to customers through its continuous R & D back up. The company's team aims to take iConnect beyond India to the global market to bridge the digital divide.

Y B Ramakrishna (YBR), the dynamic Chief Operating Officer, heads the company's Bangalore operations. YBR is an engineering graduate from Mysore University and has pursued business management studies from Carnegie University, US. He worked for the New York-based Arrow Electronics for thirteen years before joining hands with the iNablers team.

Bangalorebest.com contacted YBR before the official launch of their iStation, a product that promises to bridge the digital divide.

What is this digital divide and what measures have been taken by iNablers to tackle that?

Today the Internet is growing in leaps and bounds. At present, English is the preferred official language for Internet transactions. But, in India, a majority of the population lack the knowledge of English. Besides, the prohibitive prices of computers prevent common people from purchasing them. If we can offer people an economical device to send e-mails in a language they are proficient in, the digital divide can be bridged.

Tell us about the iNablers team.

The company had a start-up team of only twelve qualified professionals in October 1997. But now the employee strength has expanded to seventy. We are also planning to remodel the employee base to three hundred in the coming year.

How can voice and text mail be sent through your new e-mail device- iStation?

Only text messages can be sent at the moment. Voice mailing would be enabled for transactions in the coming years. The text message has to be keyed into iStation and this is sent to the iNabler's server located in each city. Through the server, iWays will resend the text to the target e-mail IDs. Five users can use one iStation, each with different e-mail IDs. Our e-mail service is also facilitated with Smart Media that provides users a collective space of 8 Megabytes.

Your company is expecting to nurture 18 lakh users by 2003. Which section of users do you intend targeting?

We are expecting the best response from every section of society. It may be from school or college students or from any common man who wants to send or receive e-mail. The market is not restricted to urban places. We can expect a large customer base in rural areas as the device supports regional languages. At present, the device facilitates e-mailing in Kannada, Hindi and English. We will introduce Tamil and Telugu in the coming days. With all these arrangements, we are sure to nurture a large clientele base.

What was the response to the product at the recently concluded BangaloreIT.COM 2000?

It was terrific, way beyond our expectations. A large number of students and other visitors showed keen interest in our product. Though we arranged the demonstration in order to conceptualize our e-mailing, many have come forward expressing the desire to own one.

The Karnataka government lauded the iStation concept. Comment.

The government has shown great interest in the concept because it is user friendly and affordable to even a rural person.

What are iNabler's future plans?

To make available a channel to the common man that allows him to transact e-mail easily. We are going to install iStation at Public Call Offices. We are sure that a common man, who does not own iStation, can just walk in, type the text to send e-mails. For all this, he needs to pay a nominal fee. We are going to see that this fee is kept as low as possible.

The company will be participating in the forthcoming mega IT fair in Delhi. Pramod Mahajan, the Union Minister for Information Technology has expressed his deep satisfaction with iNabler's initiatives.

Here is a company that walks hand in hand with common men and plans to take them to IT spaces that would have otherwise been beyond their reach.

Click here to know more about Email Enablers

Click here to know more on how to Email sans computers

Charan C S

|