RUPAY to revolutionise Indian Economy !

We have been hearing Visa, Mastercard, AMEX etc. for a long time and have been using them to pay for our purchases. What we don't realise while we use them is that, even while we shop at a local grocery, our transaction is processed through a multinational company headquartered in America. Swipe your card for your lunch at a restaurant in Mumbai and a share of the amount goes to a company in America. Doesn't that sound a bit odd?

Things are changing and we Indians have our own payment network now. RUPAY ! RUPAY is an initiative by NPCI (National Payments Corporation of India) to end the monopoly of international card giants in Indian market. Being a domestic company, customers get the benefit of lower charges and faster processing as the transactions are processed within India. More over concerns of data security is minimised since information doesn't leave the country.

With the launch of low cost domestic payment network, debit cards can reach even the economically unprivileged. This is a great stepping stone to including each and every Indian in the banking system.

Tie ups with Discover network will provide international acceptance to Rupay. Now Indians can swipe with pride.

Indigenous Glucometer - India

So that's a happy news for the typical Indian, who suffers from one of the major lifestyle disease - diabetes. Glucometers are of great help for common people to monitor their blood glucose levels periodically and keep it under control without having to spend a considerable amount from their monthly savings to visit a lab and get it checked. But this isn't quite inexpensive as the device and its disposable strips aren't cheap. The price of devices commonly used in India range from  Rs. 1,000 to 2,500 while their strips cost from  Rs. 18 to 35 a piece. The major players in the Indian market are OneTouch and Accu-Check. 

With the indigenous glucometer hitting the Indian markets, an individual would be able to buy them for a cost of around Rs. 500 to 1000, which is way below the current prices. The strips also are way cheaper ranging from Rs. 2 to 4. The device has been developed with the funding from Indian Council of Medical Research. The key players behind its development are Indian Institute of Science and Technology, Mumbai and the Birla Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. One can expect to buy this by mid 2014.