What is SARU?
SARU – denoting “bountiful” in the Sinhala language – is a low-cost, holistic automated “smart farming” kit to maximize the productivity and the benefits of climate-smart and resource-efficient “protected agriculture” – while solving the heavy requirement for human intervention in purely manual or timer-based protected-house cultivation. The intervention is designed to be affordable for smallholder farmers, returning the invested capital in 1-2 accelerated cultivation cycles, allowing farmers to reinvest and “bootstrap” themselves out of poverty and climate vulnerability through their own effort and earnings.
Dialog’ Focus on Digital Inclusion
Dialog Axiata PLC has since inception placed a major focus on Digital Inclusion. This ranges from maintaining and sustainably growing the network with the widest coverage in the country; to awareness-creating about the appropriate use of digital technologies to “enhance Sri Lankan lives and enterprises” per its corporate vision; to creating products and services that serve untapped, otherwise ignored needs of non-mainstream customers. Dialog’s 4As framework for Digital Inclusion is instrumental in guiding this work. These are Affordability; Availability; Applicability; and Affinity. In line with these principles, the Company undertakes the effort to maintain and create services that even the most marginalized will be willing to experiment with if they see a sustainable value proposition; it then seeks to make sure these services are available in localized and appropriate forms and languages, with a service network capable of supporting the customer; to create value for and retain the customer, the solution must be genuinely applicable and useful for the – usually livelihood-related – preoccupations of such users; and finally, genuine value for the Company and the customer come from a stable, long-term value-creating journey, where the customer is the best ambassador for the product or service, and champions them among their peers.
