To leverage technology, listen to the being who has the problem and observe the context around that being.

Recently, as I was having my lunch on a sunday afternoon, I saw a helicopter flying very close to my balcony and landing in the grass field in the front. Surprised and curious, I ran to the balcony and saw how this helicopter helped to save the life of an old lady who suffered a cardiac arrest. This timely intervention using a helicopter was surprising as I have seen how countless lives were lost in the developing world either because people didn’t have access to a good hospital nearby or because of the fact that the ambulance was not able to drive through the chaotic traffic. The video below shows how drones helped to save two teenagers, who were caught in an Australian coastline, by dropping floating devices from the top. It took less than a minute for the drone to reach the spot and drop the floating pads to save the teenagers. The coastguards had told journalists that it would have taken 1 - 2 hours or even more for humans to do what the drone did in such a short time. In situations like these where life or death is about a matter of secs or minutes, these technologies can play a pivotal role.

While there are thousands of pain points that can be solved by these technologies, these technologies require 'systems' that are orderly and where the human interfaces are well defined. I am going to discuss three areas in developing countries where there will be massive benefits of engaging these technologies.

1. Abandoned Bore-wells:

In India, a largely agrarian country, the farmers depend mainly on groundwater for irrigation. With increasing population, lesser land holdings and urbanisation, deep bore-wells are dug for groundwater extraction. Because of lack of good policies, individual home owners and farmers start employing private bore-well companies to dig these bore-wells to extract water for their personal use. When the the bore-well companies don’t find ground water, they simply abandon these bore-wells, which could run 100s of feet below the surface, leaving them open. Every year, there are around 25–30 cases of infants and kids falling into these open bore-wells resulting in many deaths. This is followed by massive rescue operations using primitive technology.

In some cases, villagers tie ropes to slightly grown up kids and send them downwards through that narrow hole to lift and rescue the trapped child. Almost all the current solutions are very dangerous, ineffective and costs lot of time, money & effort.

Imagine the following possibilities –

- A mini drone flying into the narrow hole taking food, oxygen & even, entertainment to keep the child distracted from getting scared.

- A robot that can climb down and lift the child from the well without disturbing the earth around causing very minimal damage.

2. Fire Accidents:

Around 20,000 fire accidents happen every year in India. While the numbers are coming down, the fact that 54 people loose their lives in such incidents is a shocker in the 21st century. Robots can play a HUGE ROLE in saving lives in these situations.

Imagine the following possibilities:

- A robot like Chitti in the popular tamil movie Endhiran played by superstar Rajinikanth that comes for a rescue.

- A robot that can withstand extreme heat combined with artificial intelligence could prove to be a blessing and these robots need not be in human form. Instead of one, we can have 100s of trained robots who can operate effectively in such a situation.

- A mini drone water sprinkler that can fly and dose fire through either sprinkling water or other solutions to mitigate the fire could turn out to be a blessing.

3. Long distance driving:

In 2106, there were close to half a million road accidents in India resulting in a staggering 17 deaths per hour. Poor driving discipline, chaotic traffic systems and lack of access to hospitals are the main causes of this horrendous statistics.

I have watched how truck drivers use stones to ‘cruise control’ by placing them on the accelerators and taking their legs off so that they can brush, dance and chat while driving in a highway. Watch the video below to understand how reckless some truck drivers are in the subcontinent roads.

Imagine giving autonomous vehicles and cruise control technology to these drivers. The context needs to be understood and observed before we enable rapid adoption. However, they can come in very handy during emergency situations.

Imagine the following possibility:

- A drone carrying a first aid box and dropping it with some visual instruction papers so that anyone can use it to save a person.

- A drone that can fly very close to the victim and a doctor from a remote call center can diagnose and give instructions through a camera.

BUT it is not easy to adopt these technologies in these emerging markets. Most recently, we saw how the Google CEO's announcement, on how an AI assistant made a hair salon appointment, got ridiculed in social media because the technology-human interfaces are not defined well in the frontier markets and the simplistic approach of that AI assistant evoked so much fun and laughter in those markets. We need to peel multiple layers to truly understand the motivation and behaviours of not just the end users in these markets but also the CONTEXT in which those motivations and behaviours manifest for those users.

Technology is always an enabler, provided we have the will to use them to solve pressing problems for people who need them the most and where it is needed the most. Most importantly, when you think of using these technologies in the frontier markets, we need to understand the 'whole' with all its chaotic interconnections to create meaningful value.