a great future with the massesanother man on the movegurgaonbased hilmi quraishihas successfully harnessed the power of mobile phones to generate awareness about lifethreatening diseases like hiv and tbquraishis zmqa mobile solutions companyhas developed mobile games using a popular sport like cricket to propagate messages to prevent and cure hivaids and tbavailable through cellular operators as a value added service either free of cost or for a nominal rs 35 per downloadthe games have been developed specially for entrylevel black and white as well as colour handsetsquraishis freedom hivaids programme launched three years ago has been successfully used in india and africa to battle the diseasein indiait is within the reach of over 42 million subscribers in africa over 2 millionquraishi says his challenge is to translate that reach into actual numbersthe explosive growth of mobile users in the country is very likely to prove him rightquraishi is now working with microsoft to develop a software to create a database of tb patientsthe software will track them and monitor their dots dosages like a good doctorcurrently all the tb patient records are in paper form and any calamity could destroy them foreverif that happenswed be back to square onewith this softwarewe have online recordswe can monitor patients and track them to ensure they get their tb medication on time says quraishihe points out the instance of delhiwhich has nearly 57000 registered tb patientsof which around 43000 have mobile phoneswhoever knew tb could be fought with a phone vijay pratap singh adityaa former iima research associatehas always found the market potential of rural india alluringsoit is not so surprising that he decided to set up ek gaon technologies in 2002 to develop lowcost technological solutions and provide financial servicescitizen services and agricultural services to rural populationsaditya set up ek gaon with an investment of rs 10000his aim was to bring urban services to rural consumersek gaon has joined hands with banksmicrofinance institutions and nonbanking financial institutions to provide mobileenabled solutions for microfinance managementit caters to over 45 lakh people spread across states like rajasthantamil nadu and orissarecentlyit stepped up its activities across the border and is now available in countries like sri lanka as wellsays adityaif india is an emerging marketthen the rural markets are emerging to the forefront as wellwe connect money to the consumer with the help of technology ek gaon provides financial services at 15 paise per transactionit also offers agricultural services packagesthat include weather forecastsdisease alertssoil managementmarket prices informationin subscription options of rs 240 per annum and rs 120 per crop season through sms alertsand through ivrs interactive voice response system services for illiterate farmerschildrenagainare the focus of bill draytonfounder and ceo of ashoka innovators for the publiche works at empowering children to become innovators through its newly launched youth venture programmethe programme has been kicked off in mumbai in a few municipal schoolsonce successfully completedit will be replicated in schools in other parts of the countryif india does not empower its children and change its youth