Hardik Sanghvi, 31

PROBLEM: Even though recently new technologies are being used to develop products and services for the rural India, technology to deliver quality education to them still hasn't yet reached the remote geographies. There is no infrastructure in the country to support video communication, as there is no proper bandwidth available to consume such content.

SOLUTION: Hardik Sanghvi, a electronics and communication engineering graduate, has built an innovative advanced compression algorithm that enables delivery of high quality video on dial up, broadband connections, and data cards with as low as 100 kilo bytes per second bandwidth.

BS Bhatia, director of Development and Educational Communication Unit and Project Director - Edusat (India's tele-education satellite), Indian Space Research Organisation, says, "The unique feature of the streaming technique developed by Hardik is its ability to work with very low bandwidth. The satellite based networks were working primarily at 384 kbps. Below this the quality was not considered satisfactory either in educational or telemedicine applications. With some compromise one could work at 256 kbps. However, in developing countries getting such bandwidth in rural areas is difficult and providing interactivity via satellite is expensive. The solution provided by Hardik makes it possible to reach out to areas where the bandwidth availability is a constraint. This could be very useful for tele-education, telemedicine, e-governance, and information services to rural areas."

Sanghvi, who founded VMukti Solutions in Ahmedabad to market the software, says, "VMukti's interactive streaming solution is 2.5 times faster than existing technologies in transferring stored or live video content." To make the solution affordable, VMukti offers the software as a service, making it a cost effective operational expenditure proposition for institutes and organizations interested in imparting education to rural India.