Services Provided Through e-Choupal

1. Selling Consumer Products (FMCG /Non FMCG) A number of consumer goods produced by ITC were being sold at all the e-Choupals. Various FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) products like - biscuits (Sunfeast), agarbatti (Mangaldeep), salt (Ashirwad), cigarette, match stick (Aim), candy, washing powder (Fena), cake, nip bar, torch and battery (Evereready), CFL (Philips), hair oil, tea (Dunkans), fairness cream (Emami), tooth paste (Colgate), etc. were put-up on display. Further, non FMCG ( non fast moving consumer good) products like-seed (TDC, Bayer), tractor (Mahindra), motorbike (TVS), weather insurance, mob oil (trade name Max), fertilizer (Kribhco) were also up for sale at e-Choupals. The farmers, or for that matter anybody living in that village, can buy them as per their requirement. 2. Loan Although ITC does provide financial credit, the e-Choupal facilitators (sanchalak) helped farmer in getting the loans for certain articles like tractor, motorbike, etc. from banks and other financial institutions. As it may happen, farmers in villages are not even aware of such services being provided by banks. Sometimes banks and other financial institutions run special schemes for the benefit of farmers which remain under/unutilized due to lack of awareness among farming community and inadequate facilitation. 3. Insurance The facilitators of e-Choupal also educated the farmers about various insurance schemes and their sources, especially crop insurance provided by bank and other financial institutions. Presently, the e-Choupal was found to provide life insurance as well as crop insurance to farmers of their area. 4. Weather Uncertain and erratic weather condition plays a crucial role in successful and profitable farming. e-Choupal provided updated weather information about their areas/zones. Users of e-Choupal can select their district of interest by clicking on the appropriate region of a map on the computer kept at e-Choupal. Localized weather information is presented on selected regions within a 25 kilometer range. Typically, 24-72 hour weather forecasts were available along with an advisory. These advisories are pieces of information directly related to the farmer- information he can put to use. For instance, during the sowing season, a weather forecast for days following heavy rains may include an advisory that instructs the farmer to sow seeds while the soil is still wet.

Weather data was obtained from Indian Meteorological Department, which has a presence even in small towns and can provide location-specific forecasts for rural areas. 5. Pricing The e-Choupal Website displays both the ITC procurement rate and the local mandi rates for various commodities. ITC's next day rates are also published every evening. The prices are displayed prominently on the top of the Web page on a scrolling ticker. The farmer can make use of latest prices and decide where he should sell his produce to get high profit. Sometimes, if there are large stocks of a commodity, say wheat or rice, the ITC/e-Choupal sanchalak can arrange to procure it right in the village. This help farmers save on transportation costs thereby increasing their profitability/net income. 6. Best practices Farmers, by virtue of their long farming experience and understanding of local situation, have lots of good practices which remain un-documented. The e-Choupal can help share and document these crop specific and location specific traditional wisdom. Some action based information can be circulated among the farming community in the form of best practices. It was found that e-Choupal facilitated circulation of this traditional wisdom in form of cropspecific best practices. 7. Question and Answer This feature enables the farmers to pose their specific questions to experts and seek solutions of their problems. The e-Choupal facilitator helped sending e-mail (of the questions/problem being faced by farmers) to scientists who, after careful examination and assessment, provided specific solution. Depending upon the ICT infrastructure available, teleconferencing facilities could also be offered. 8. Agri-inputs The e-Choupal provides a number of agri-inputs like seeds, fertilizers, insecticides/pesticides. The e-Choupal tries to provide best quality seeds of major crops as per their demand/requirement. This helps the farmers to get good crops. Besides providing these inputs, the farmers also get 'how to use' kind of information and recommendation. Testing of soil sample brought by the farmers is also done free of cost by e-Choupal. 9. Purchases farmers' produce The e-Choupal purchased the harvested produce of farmers so that farmers get good prices of their produce. Although it was not mandatory for e-Choupal users to offer their produce, many farmers found it profitable and hassel-free. The payment by ITC was also quick and straight forward.

Other Internet Resources Accessed at the e-Choupal

News Farmers, with the help from sanchalak of e-Choupal, surf the internet and read newspapers like Dainik jagran, Web Dunia on the computer kept at e-Choupal.

Market Prices Regular and routine checking of prevailing market prices in the nearby mandi is done by sanchakak. He also informs about price/market trends of major agriculture commodities and helps them in decision making. One sanchalak actually followed Chicago board of Trade (CBOT) prices for a month and worked out a correlation with the local market prices. He used this information and helped other farmers decide when to sell their produce in the nearby mandi. Entertainment The e-Choupal facilitators also provide entertainment services like movie trivia; rent CDs to watch movies on the computer, music downloads from the Internet, as per demand. Besides film and music, the farmers also get cricket related news. Education Students used the Internet to check their exam results and grades online. Some more knowledgeable students searched for jobs and other online services besides downloading educational materials on topics of their interest. Communication (E-mail) The system of 'e-mail' is fast catching up even in rural India. Farmers/people send e-mails to their near and dear ones settled abroad. Besides, the sanchalaks have e-mail accounts on Yahoo Chat for interested farmers. Some sanchalaks used chat rooms to chat with other sanchalaks and ITC managers. General interests The e-Choupal facilitators also provide Information about cell phones and a variety of other utilities on demand. Conclusion e-Choupal has been most successful initiative to wire rural India and to involve the farmers in learning. ITC has envisaged on various plans to replicate the success achieved to other states and expand the services offered to other commodities like spices. ITC has also identified e-Choupal as an important driver for exports, which are targeted at $ 400 million by 2005. e-Choupal has also attracted attention from the renowned academicians, since eChoupal has managed to innovate the supply-chain, and model applied by ITC has enough potential to be replicated in the under-developed and developing countries.

ITC has been successful in making the farmer feel the sense of ownership and enthuse him to generate additional revenue by eliminating middleman. ITC through e-Choupal has bought various accolades such as "Golden Star Trading House" for showing impressive track record in exports of agricultural commodities. Participating farmers have been able to enhance their income and eliminate the delay in getting the payment once the product is sold. It has helped in reducing debt burden of the farmers. The success of e-Choupal has given new lessons to the corporates in the India and abroad. The gains from the novel initiative are manifold to ITC, the farmers and othe companies. e-Choupal has helped the farmers to improve their productivity and get better prices, whereas ITC has benefited by better sourcing of raw materials and building a backbone to market the end products which is vital for the FMCG companies like ITC. The case study of e-choupal helps in identifying the factors that contributed to the success of the ICT platform in many states:

E-choupal has been one of the best ICT application platforms that has been scaled replicated and sustained. This is due to the fact that it was specifically designed for that specific business. The Sanchalaks are selected carefully and they have been able to work as nonpartisan coordinators. Sanchalaks have been able to induce the feeling of involvement. This participative style helped ICT to build trust at the local level. Trust is essential in sustaining relationships at the community level. E-choupal was customized and then validated and then expanded to the operational phase. E-choupal has found acceptance in all three businesses they have ventured into. The model of validating and then rolling it out has been an effective way of implementing a new business model. E-choupal has provided economic benefits even for the small farmers. Every beneficiary gets benefit and the equitable benefits makes the adoption very rapid. Intensive training and distributed leadership concept facilitated the acceptance of the platform concept. The empowerment of people through local action and training reduces the disparities. The ability of the choupals to deal with many inputs provides for economies of scope.

e-choupal has been heralded as the attempt at making ICT platforms enhance the market access, by eliminating the use of middlemen. ITC had the vision to conceptualize and implement this procurement cum marketing platform. It is a low cost/multi business model operated by the farmer representative. It has been validated, scaled and sustained for many businesses by ITC. By embarking on this initiative, ITC has shown that ICT platforms can benefit even if the marginal farmers.