Solar ATMs, developed by Chennai-based Vortex,
are helping spread banking in remote areas
Business Standard
11 August 2012
In January 2010, State Bank of India was about to open a branch in
Sannyasidanga village near Jangipur, West Bengal - the Lok Sabha
constituency of Pranab Mukherjee, then finance minister and now president
of
India. It would be the 100,000th village in its network. Mukherjee had
consented to inaugurate the branch, the showpiece of which would be a
brand-new ATM. Two days before the inauguration, SBI officers realised
they
had a problem on hand: the village got power in only one phase, while the
ATM required power in three phases.
Running out of ideas, they got in touch with Chennai-based Vortex
Engineering which makes ATMs that run on solar power. A Vortex ATM was
airlifted and installed in Sannyasidanga. As feared, two hours before the
inauguration, the power went off - it was a four-hour outage. But the ATM
didn't stop working. "Fortunately, we had four hours of power backup,"
says
Vortex CEO Vijay Babu.
Vortex developed these ATMs in 2008 in collaboration with Indian
Institute
of Technology Madras. While researchers at IIT developed the software and
electronics, the engineering was done by Vortex. Thus, Vortex gives IIT a
certain royalty on all machines sold.
So far, Vortex has supplied 6,000 ATMs which have all been installed in
small towns and remote villages - from Ganga Sagar, an island off the
West
Bengal coast, to Dhordo, a small desert village in Rajasthan. Some 70
ATMs
have been supplied to SBI alone, which is now Vortex's largest customer.
It
has even supplied ATMs to Nepal, Bangladesh, Dubai, Madagascar and some
countries in North Africa.
Vortex has been contracted to supply 2,000 more and hopes to bag orders
for
another 8,000. Expecting more orders, Vortex wants to ramp up the
capacity
of its factory from 150 ATMs a month to 1,000 ATMs. International Finance
Corporation, Ventureast, Oasis Fund, Aavishkaar and Tata Capital
Innovations
Fund have invested in Vortex and together own 80 per cent of the company.
A conventional ATM consumes 500 to 600 watts of power. They consume so
much
power because they use conveyor belts to move the currency notes. Also
they
may stop functioning at temperatures above 35 degrees. The rugged Vortex
ATMs, in contrast, use a different, patented technology to move the notes
without conveyor belts. In conventional ATMs, cash is transported upwards
from almost floor-level, which requires a lot of power. Vortex ATMs, on
the
other hand, have a gravity-assisted track in which the currency notes
fall
into the dispensing slot. So they consume very little power (less than
100W)
and can function in temperatures of up to 50 degrees.
Vortex has also done away with the two PCs that run perennially within
every
ATM - one for interface with the customer and another for the bank
employee
who loads the cash. "Every ATM has an A4 printer, recording every single
transaction. Even if you just put your card in, decide you don't want to
do
anything and cancel the transaction, that is recorded on paper. We got
rid
of that. We record the data electronically, so that it can be pulled out
by
the bank remotely," says Babu. Instead of communicating with bank
branches
through cables, Vortex ATMs use wireless-in-local-loop platform.
So, while a conventional ATM costs around Rs 800,000 to install, Vortex
ATMs
cost 30 per cent less; their operating cost is also significantly lower.
Banks require at least 200 transactions a day to justify the investment
on a
conventional ATM; in Vortex ATMs, breakeven is achieved at less than 100
transactions.
Not that Vortex hasn't had setbacks. In the initial stages, some ATMs
supplied to SBI had to be recalled because they were unable to handle
soiled
notes. The design then had to be modified and improved. These are working
without complaints now.
