Villages in India have always been aloof from basic amenities like food and clothing. In such a scenario, getting access to banking facilities sounded like a far off dream. But this dream has been turned into reality by Chennai based Vortex Engineering. The company has come with a special ATM built purposely for the rural areas.

The ATM named Gramateller, was initially designed for the rural folk, but its developed features may bring it to the urban interface too.

The idea behind developing an ATM specially focused to cater to rural India emerged almost a decade back when the founder of Vortex, R Kannan, an IIT Chennai alumnus, together with professor Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Bhaskar Ramamurthi and other faculty started working on strategies to develop technology suited to the rural needs.

The pilot experimentation of this project began in rural areas near Madurai. "Acceptance was good but the ATM was too expensive for places with low footfalls such as rural and semi-urban areas," says Mr Kannan.

"It was a tough investment. It took a long time to perfect," recalls Vineet Rai of Aavishkaar, a venture capital (VC) focussed on social and rural investments.

Conventional ATMs consume about 1,800 units of electricity a month, but Gramateller requires 72 units, says Vijay V Babu, CEO, Vortex. The ATM operates on Linux. It also has an in built UPS, which allows it to sustain power cuts and also has facility to run on solar energy.

The ATMs also have biometric fingerprint authentication technology and can also dispense soiled notes. "India has an installed base of around 45,000 ATMs - the ideal ratio is 1 ATM for every 1000 people. So, to even get to 1 ATM for every 10,000 people, India would need over 1 lakh ATMs more," Babu says.