Tamil Nadu - Madurai   

From housewife to a tech-savvy woman

Staff Reporter

MADURAI: Are you a woman who wants to become a tech-savvy with your own notepad, cell phone, MP3 player, plasma screen and more unlike your grandmom, who was scared even to raise the volume of the radio or your mom who was content with choosing her mixer-grinders.

In a recent episode of MasterMind India, Siddharth Basu's quiz show on BBC, one of the questions posed was `Which Indian worked for Hewlett-Packard for 20 years and now leads SupportSoft, a major U.S. software firm?" The answer: Radha R Basu.

The tech-savvy woman has arrived.

Want to be one?

To suit the requirements of the evolving new-age woman, Reliance Infocomm has come out with a concept called `cybermom,' to help homemakers take that step ahead and explore the World Wide Web.

"Value-added experience is the key. The business services desk at our Web World will ensure this. The basic objective of the concept is educational programmes aimed at the helping a housewife become as computer savvy as her husband and children," said Bob Dexter, Head, Reliance Web World - Tamil Nadu circle.

The course was designed in such way it would cater to the needs of individual housewives. Whatever you want on the WWW, you name it and it is available.

Accessing chat channels, e-mails, search engines... . "Some are keen on learning cooking, some want to explore shopping and others want to know more about baby care and the choice of education services available for their children. The executives at the business desk will identify their choices of information, and will guide them to those websites," he added.

When a `PC a home' is the norm in urban households, will `cybermom' lure the urban woman?

"In fact, those who have a PC want to go through the course to broaden their knowledge. Some websites such as thomascook.com has heavy content and you need broadband connectivity to download faster, so joining the course becomes useful for them. In some homes, women are scared to use the PC and they prefer to experiment it in a browsing centre," Dexter added.

Though the largest target audience for `cybermom' is housewives, anyone in the age group 15-60 can take up the course.

All you have to do is just walk into any Reliance Web World, enrol yourself and complete the course at your pace.

There is also a supplementary tool `Little Genius' programme which will go with `cybermom' to help kids learn subject-oriented topics on the Web and Windows and Office packages.

The `cybermom' package would cost Rs.500 for a 10-hour programme while Little Genius would cost at Rs.750 for a 16-day course.

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