Melur, Madurai District, Tamil Nadu

TeNeT Group, IIT-Madras
MIT Media Lab
Berkman Center, Harvard Law School
I -Gyan Foundation
n-Logue Communications


The SARI (Sustainable Access in Rural India) Project is dedicated to demonstrating that the creation, deployment, and delivery of information and communication services and technologies in poor rural areas leads to improvements in health,
empowerment, learning, and economic development amongst the poorest and most disadvantaged communities - and that such services can be realized in an economically sustainable fashion.

SARI focuses on:

  1. Inventing and deploying innovative and context-appropriate technologies, applications, and highly localized content that lead to economic and social development;
  2. Conducting social and economic impact assessment research of these technologies;
  3. Testing and generating business models that lead to profit generation and allow the services and technologies to be self sustaining;
  4. Benefifiting from the Network Effect that comes from connecting up a large number of communities and users, aggregating demand and integrating markets.

The initial pilot phase will provide internet access and applications through roughly 1000 connections in 350 villages in the Madurai District of the southeastern Indian State of Tamil Nadu.

SARI is a project of IIT-Madras; MIT Media Lab; Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University Law School; and the I-Gyan Foundation. It is carried out jointly with n-Logue Communicaitons Pvt. Ltd.