- 24 new ‘Smartpur’ centres opened under the company’s CSR initiative aims to offer digital enablement in rural areas
- Lt Governor Sh Manoj Sinha hoped the telecom operator to establish two more centres in the state
Recently, telecom company Nokia announced an expansion of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts in the state of Jammu & Kashmir. Under the initiative, 24 new ‘Smartpur’ centres have been opened in various Panchayat jurisdictions in Samba (18 centres) and Anantnag (6 centres) districts. It is implemented by two of Nokia’s nonprofit partners – Save the Children and Digital Empowerment Foundation. As per Nokia, Smartpur is a digital village ecosystem project aimed at integrating technology into the daily lives of people living in remote villages.
In an official release, the phone company noted that its flagship social impact program was designed with sustainability, scalability, replicability and large-scale impact in mind. Using digital connectivity technology, the project intends to empower licensed local entrepreneurs and provide them with facilities to make services accessible at the village level through Panchayat-level Smartpur centres, read the statement. It claimed to have expanded the project to 90 more villages in the last year, hence increasing the number of Smartpur centres to 350 villages across India in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh. The company, which is a Bharti Foundation’s Silver Awardee for Social Initiative (India), further mentioned that around 30 Smartpur centres in Northern states have become self-sustaining in the same period.
Head of Marketing & Corporate Affairs at Nokia India, Amit Marwah commented, “As part of our larger commitment to local communities, we are facilitating connectivity and digitization to further positive socio-economic, educational and health impacts in India by leveraging core strengths to address the urgent needs of the underprivileged populations. We derive great pride from the fact that we have been able to keep our promise and scale up from one to twenty-five Smartpur centres in Jammu and Kashmir in a year. We are thankful to the local administration for all their assistance and encouragement.”
In February, Nokia extended fibre broadband equipment manufacturing into India. The company had also opened a LaaS test lab in Bengaluru to drive Industry 4.0 goals.
Over 150 years old Nokia is a Finland-headquartered company which believes in creating technology that helps the world act together. The telecom operator partners with companies for critical networks, across mobile, fixed, and cloud networks.
