InfoLady (Kallyani) Programme — Women-for-Women Village Infopreneurs, Bangladesh

D.Net (Development Research Network), a Bangladeshi social enterprise, piloted the InfoLady concept from 2004 and formalised it as the 'Kallyani' business model in 2010 — a women-for-women info-preneurship approach to last-mile ICT access in rural Bangladesh.

Enable rural women, financed through micro-loans, to deliver door-to-door ICT-enabled health, agricultural, government-service and communication information to households, including on culturally sensitive topics such as contraception.

Each Kallyani is equipped with a tablet/smartphone, laptop, camera and bicycle (financed via a ~70,000-80,000 BDT bank micro-loan), covering a catchment of ~3-4 sq km / 400 households and charging small per-service fees (US$0.13-US$1.30).

By 2018, 464 Kallyanis were active across 9 districts. An earlier cohort of 102 Kallyanis completed over 500,000 paid service transactions (2010-2015), with providers reporting average monthly earnings of $100-150. A 2015 interim qualitative evaluation recorded client satisfaction of 8/10 and trust in the Kallyani of 9/10; scale fell well short of D.Net's stated ambition of 10,000 Kallyanis nationwide by 2021.