I-MADE (Innovation in Mobile App Development Ecosystem) announced introduction of student wallet, a mobile application which will drive cashless transactions on campus with its platform technology. Students will be able to use I-MADE Wallet through their college’s official Android & iOS mobile app, for their daily transactional needs including payment of fees, canteen expenses, food ordering, travelling expenses, hostel fees, buying of study material etc.
Currently students face inconvenience with payment through cash or card as some outlets don’t accept multiple modes of payment and majority of students are dependent on their parents for monthly allowance. This becomes even bigger a problem especially when students are studying in a different city. I-MADE wallet will facilitate parent to student money transfer and empower students to make transactions without the need to carry paper or plastic currency.
The wallet will be available to over 20 million students across online and offline merchants. Further, the app will also allow users to browse through the discounts offered by partnered merchants and help students save money on essential items.
“One of the high priority agenda item under I-MADE program is to digitize institutions across India and providing better infrastructure to students by filling out gaps that exists today. Mobile wallet is one such step towards that. We hope that the problems faced by students and parents during student life regarding payment of bills and money transfer will be solved by this in a safe and secured manner" said Mr. R K Pathak, DDG(IC), DoT and Director, TCOE India.
Anurag Vibhuti, Deputy Director, Telecom Center of Excellence reiterated the commitment of his department under I-MADE program and said “ Mobile wallet is one of the many necessary changes we want to bring in Indian colleges and education system by introducing technology. We firmly believe that by introduction of technology at different level and stages of student life cycle we would be able to promote and encourage a lot of creative ideas among students which will ultimately serve our goal of creating one million startups under the program”. Students can also use this feature in their apps requiring payments for in App usage.
Mr. Aashutosh Bhardvaj CEO, I-MADE Kryptos Platform said "The launch of the I-MADE Wallet is a big step towards enabling cashless transactions for students across a wide range of products and services they use every day. With the wallet parents can transfer money directly to students’ wallets and students can make transactions without the need to carry paper or plastic currency, making it a seamless experience. The app will enable users to do a lot more including mobile recharges and money transfers.”
About I-MADE:
I-MADE program is an initiative by Telecom Centers of Excellence (TCOE) India supported by Venture Capitalists. It substantially relieves an institution from the financial pressure of developing a mobile solution for students, faculty, and staff. I-MADE is a 5-year program which aims to connect 20 million students across the 35,000 institutions in India by providing them with their official mobile app and a platform to create mobile app startups. It selected 25 institutions to be part of Phase I. The goal of the program is to help Indian entrepreneurs build 1 million mobile app start-ups which can eventually become Indian unicorns.
I-MADE is accepting applications from institutes for its Phase II and will announce successful applicants in August, 2016. Last date to apply for next phase is July 30th, 2016.
