So for example, we didn't have ways to have credit checks, few banks to collect bills, etc. But that's why I noticed Grameen Bank, which is a bank for poor people, and had 1,100 branches, 12,000 employees, 2.3 million borrowers. And they had these branches. I thought I could put cell towers and create a network.
And anyway, to cut the time short -- so I started --I first went to them and said, "You know, perhaps I could connect all your branches and make you more efficient." But you know, they have, after all, evolved in a country without telephones, so they are decentralized. I mean, of course there might be other good reasons, but this was one of the reasons -- they had to be. And so they were not that interested to connect all their branches, and then to be -- and rock the boat.
So I started focusing. What is it that they really do? So what happens is that somebody borrows money from the bank. She typically buys a cow. The cow gives milk. And she sells the milk to the villagers, and pays off the loan.
And this is a business for her, but it's milk for everybody else. And suddenly I realized that a cell phone could be a cow. Because some way she could borrow 200 dollars from the bank, get a phone and have the phone for everybody. And it's a business for her. So I wrote to the bank, and they thought for a while, and they said, "It's a little crazy, but logical. If you think it can be done, come and make it happen." So I quit my job; I went back to Bangladesh. I created a company in America called Gonofone, which in Bengali means "people's phone." And angel investors in America put in money into that. I flew around the world. After about a million -- I mean, I got rejected from lots of places, because I was not only trying to go to a poor country, I was trying to go to the poor of the poor country. After about a million miles, and a meaningful --a substantial loss of hair, I eventually put together a consortium, and -- which involved the Norwegian telephone company, which provided the know-how, and the Grameen Bank provided the infrastructure to spread the service. To make the story short, here is the coverage of the country. You can see it's pretty much covered. Even in Bangladesh, there are some empty places. But we are also investing around another 300 million dollars this year to extend that coverage.
Now, about that cow model I talked about. There are about 115,000 people who are retailing telephone services
in their neighborhoods. And it's serving 52,000 villages, which represent about 80 million people.
And these phones are generating about 100 million dollars for the company. And two dollars profit per entrepreneur per day, which is like 700 dollars per year. And of course, it's very beneficial in a lot of ways. It increases income, improves welfare, etc. And the result is, right now, this company is the largest telephone company, with 3.5 million subscribers, 115,000 of these phones I talked about -- that produces about a third of the traffic in the network.
And 2004, the net profit, after taxes --very serious taxes -- was 120 million dollars. And the company contributed about 190 million dollars to the government coffers. And again, here are some of the lessons. "The government needs to provide economically viable services." Actually, this is an instance where private companies can provide that."Governments need to subsidize private companies." This is what some people think. And actually, private companies help governments with taxes. "Poor people are recipients."Poor people are a resource. "Services cost too much for the poor." Their involvement reduces the cost. "The poor are uneducated and cannot do much." They are very eager learners and very capable survivors. I've been very surprised. Most of them learn how to operate a telephone within a day. "Poor countries need aid." Businesses -- this one company has raised the -- if the ideal figures are even five percent true, this one company is raising the GNP of the country much more than the aid the country receives. And as I was trying to show you, as far as I'm concerned, aid does damages because it removes the government from its citizens.
And this is a new project I have with Dean Kamen, the famous inventor in America. He has produced some power generators, which we are now doing an experiment in Bangladesh, in two villages where cow manure is producing biogas, which is running these generators. And each of these generators is selling electricity to 20 houses each. It's just an experiment. We don't know how far it will go, but it's going on. Thank you.