Greater Mumbai partners with Sify Technologies to open up e-ports

Details: Category: Consumer Ecosystems; 28 August 2008; 8073 views

Millions of citizens in Mumbai will now enjoy access to municipally provided services thanks to a tie-up with Sify technologies' ePort cyber café chain...

Millions of citizens in Mumbai will now enjoy access to municipally provided services thanks to a tie-up with Sify technologies' ePort cyber café chain.

Sify Technologies, has announced a partnership with the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), the country’s first and largest municipal corporation. The partnership will enable MCGM to leverage Sify’s ePort cyber café chain in Mumbai to provide online services to Mumbai’s citizens including:

payment of water tax and property tax;
renewing shop and establishment licences;
applying for birth and death certificates;
applying for health licenses; and
registering complaints and tracking the status of complaints.

Mumbai’s citizens can now visit any of the 250 e-port cafés in the city to access these facilities online. The city’s e-port’s will function as civic service centres for the MCGM, so citizens need not have a Sify account for using these services.

At present there are 40 million bills being paid annually in Mumbai alone towards property tax, water tax, birth and death certificates, licences etc. This facility enables Sify’ e-ports to function as Multi Service Centres (MSCs) for large public and private organisations, and paves the way for more such partnerships to serve the country’s citizens.

In fact, citizens need not be familiar with computers or using the Internet to use MCGM’s online services. They need only follow a simple four-step procedure to access MCGM’s services:

carry the bill or reference number to the Sify e-port;
the café host logs on to the MCGM website at www.mcgm.gov and confirms the bill/name/ amount;
the café host accepts the money and pays online on behalf of the citizen; and
the citizen is given the print out of the receipt.

Commenting on the partnership, Naresh Ajwani, President - Consumer Infrastructure & Operations, Sify Technologies said: “This partnership is aimed at making the lives of the citizens of Greater Mumbai easier with convenient access to online services from a nearby e-port. This is a reiteration of the trust reposed in us by the public and public institutions such as MCGM in being associated with us...The advantages of such a partnership are many, and accrue to all stakeholders - the MCGM, citizens, the cyber café industry and business and industry. For the MCGM, access to their services online is available round the clock and all seven days of the week; Citizens do not have to travel to the corporation office, nor do they have to wait in long queues anymore; as these services are accessed widely, the cyber café industry will be perceived to be an enabler of convenient online access to multiple services making the Internet available for all; and business and industry will benefit from increased productivity as staff need no longer take time off to complete such chores. Such partnerships are therefore a winning proposition for everyone concerned, and we are very happy to be pioneering such a model.”

* Sify is among the largest Managed Enterprise and Consumer Internet Services companies in India, offering end-to-end solutions with a comprehensive range of products delivered over a common telecom data network infrastructure reaching 500+ cities and towns in India. A significant part of the company's revenue is derived from Corporate Services, which include corporate connectivity, network and communications solutions, security, network management services, enterprise applications and hosting. The company is India's first enterprise managed services provider to launch a Security Operations Center (SOC) to deliver managed security services. A host of blue chip customers use Sify's corporate service offerings.

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