About Us
RTBI is an independent, non-profit institution which has the unique distinction of having been funded both by the World Bank’s InfoDev Project and the Government of India’s Dept of Science and Technology’s as the only incubator focusing on rural technologies and businesses in India today. Its goal is to combine entrepreneurship with social development in rural India, with information and communication technologies as the primary development tools.
RTBI emerged from IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Madras’s informal incubator, the TeNet (Telecommunications and Networking) Group, which has been at the frontline of technology innovations in India. With a leadership comprised of faculty members from IIT Madras, Chennai, the TeNet Group not only originally conceived RTBI, but has continued to be closely involved in new idea generation, technology development and prototyping, business model design, and even pilot selection and mentorship.
RTBI recognizes that a very large percentage of India’s rural population have not benefited from India’s technology revolution or the economic growth that it is supposed to have brought about. However, it also recognizes that this population has a teeming desire for social change and thus represents a large potential market. With this in mind, in the past two years of its inception, RTBI has established itself as an innovation system offering an influential paradigm for creating ICT based service applications and business models for rural communities.
Since its founders recognized that focusing exclusively on technology would not solve the problems of rural India or bring them financial empowerment, RTBI very uniquely addresses the socio-economic needs of rural Indians through a tangible, market-driven and adaptive technological approach. This is tailored to meet local community circumstances and serve unique rural contexts.
RTBI today is actively involved in supporting entrepreneurs in building ventures to promote livelihoods, education, healthcare, agriculture, connectivity and financial inclusion in India’s rural areas.