Grassroot Deployment

ITC eChoupal Experience

By
V V Rajasekhar

ELITEX 2005
New Delhi, 25th April 2005
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 4y Presentation Scope

u Œhile the canvas for discussion is very broad, I

will limit myself to share with you few principles
of eChoupal that enabled its deployment at
grassroot to become

‡ Sustainable

‡ Scalable

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ITC eChoupal

A Quick Look

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 The eChoupal Services
u Relevant & Real-time Information
‡ Commodity prices, Local Œeather, News

u Customised Knowledge
‡ Farm 4anagement, Risk 4anagement

u Supply Chain for Farm Inputs

‡ Screened for Quality, Demand Aggregation for Competitive
Prices & Efficient Logistics

u Direct 4arketing Channel for Farm Produce

‡ Lower Transaction Costs, Better Value through Traceability

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rther Services through eChoupal

u Distribution of Products and Services to Rural

4arkets

u 4icro marketing
‡ Product/Services Demos
‡ 4arketing and Brand Building activities

u Pilots
‡ Bhoomi
‡ eHealth with Private Health Service Providers
‡ eEducation
‡ Rural BPr

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 Current Network Size
_
 



4adhya Pradesh 1750 43

Uttar Pradesh 1750 42

4aharashtra 900 22

Rajasthan 500 15

Karnataka 100 2

Andhra Pradesh 150 3


   


  


   

Adding Six New Choupals Every Day

Intend Scaling up to 100,000 Villages in 15 States by 2010
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Deployment Principles

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 o1 Co Creation
u End-to-end solution is designed collaboratively
‡ Identify major problems and
‡ solve them with efficiency and transparency

u Œhen we started, it was with a F4CG approach, with

reliance on
‡ 4arket Research
‡ Focus Groups

u« and then the approach quickly changed to

µPrototypes¶ to enable experience and obtain feedback
‡ An iterative approach to build models to solve the 
 
 of the Individual and of the Community

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 o2 4ust have a well thought out
Business 4odel
u Œho Pays ?

u Œho Runs ?

u Œho 4onitors Quality?

u Œhat are the Value Propositions to the Stake

Holders ?

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 The ITC eChoupal Proposition
u Step 1: Leveraging ICTs for empowered access to
markets (inputs & outputs)

u Step 2: Economic viability of IT infrastructure

investments is justified through Œin-Œin business
models, hence also scaleable

u Step 3: Customer responsive IT infrastructure in

the villages facilitates access to supplementary
Education, Health, Employment, eGovernance
services

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 ICTs make it possible !
u The eChoupal Price Discovery : Farmer @ Receiving
End Vs Empowered
‡ Value through Unbundling what was bundled together earlier
(Information & Transaction)
± Unbundles
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u The Input Transaction

‡ Value through Bundling (Information, Knowledge, Transaction)
what was available unbundled earlier
± Bundles
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 o3 The rrchestrator
u Œho rrchestrates the multiple entities?
‡ The scale and complexity inherent makes it a high
maintenance network

u The rrchestrator has to ensure

‡ There is a µBig Picture¶ to what is initiated
‡ µChanging Needs¶ are tracked and are efficiently
responded
‡ µContinuous Innovation¶ of the business model is
ensured for its long term relevance

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 o4 The Infrastructure

u 4ust have Three Tiers

‡ Local part for Responsiveness

‡ Regional level for Controlling

‡ Apex element for Resources Allocation

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 3 X 3 eChoupal Infrastructure
u ICT Kiosk with Internet Access
‡ In the house of one trained farmer, _
  
‡ Œithin walking distance of target farmers Link

u Œarehousing Hub / Store

‡ 4anaged by the erstwhile middleman, _  
‡ Œithin tractorable distance of target farmers Link

u Collaborative Network of Companies

‡ rrchestrated by „

‡ Œith a Pan-Indian presence Link
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 o5 Capability Building
u Build Customer rrientation right across the Chain
‡ ³Customer is Ô
reason´

u « and also the necessary Functional and Process skills

‡ Œorking Capital
‡ Demand Creation / assessment

u « along with the Soft Skills

‡ Feedback
‡ Quality / Customer Service

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Taking ICTs & Biz 4odels to
Rural India

Training
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Taking ICTs & Biz 4odels to
Rural India

Power Connectivity

Œebsite
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eChoupal Sagar
Thank You
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 Thank You

visit www.itcportal.com for more details on ITC eChoupal

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