Rural Energy Network Enterprise (RENE) is proud to announce the beta launch of GoScale, a web portal developed in collaboration with IIT Madras’ Rural Technology and Business Incubator (RTBI) team. This portal aims to bridge the existing information gap on product performance between manufacturers of energy efficient products, entities with access to rural distribution channels and actual customers.

It is a space where owners or manufacturers provide information on their products along with details on actual customers. The portal, using a voice based technology developed by RTBI, contacts customers to collect feedback that is used to rate the products. Distributors or other entities with a rural network (e.g. NGO, MFI etc.) can use the ratings as a preliminary evaluation tool to choose products.

Being a web based solution it can be accessed by multiple players in the rural retail sector and hence functions as a backend solution. This initiative is an example of a specific problem – information asymmetry between players in the supply chain – identified through RENE’s ground experience and a scalable intervention designed to fix it.

This is a beta version and all feedback is most welcome. Please provide your comments and suggestions through your comments here or through the ‘GoScale’ page on Facebook.

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Anu Valli, from the RENE team contributed to this post.