© ITC Limited Grassroot Deployment ITC eChoupal Experience By V V Rajasekhar ELITEX 2005 New Delhi, 25 th April 2005

© ITC Limited My Presentation Scope  While 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

© ITC Limited ITC eChoupal A Quick Look

© ITC Limited The eChoupal Services  Relevant & Real-time Information Commodity prices, Local Weather, News  Customised Knowledge Farm Management, Risk Management  Supply Chain for Farm Inputs Screened for Quality, Demand Aggregation for Competitive Prices & Efficient Logistics  Direct Marketing Channel for Farm Produce Lower Transaction Costs, Better Value through Traceability

© ITC Limited Other Services through eChoupal  Distribution of Products and Services to Rural Markets  Micro marketing Product/Services Demos Marketing and Brand Building activities  Pilots Bhoomi eHealth with Private Health Service Providers eEducation Rural BPO

© ITC Limited Current Network Size StateChoupalsHubs Madhya Pradesh Uttar Pradesh Maharashtra90022 Rajasthan50015 Karnataka1002 Andhra Pradesh1503 Choupals5, Villages31,000 Farmers3,500,000 Adding Six New Choupals Every Day Intend Scaling up to 100,000 Villages in 15 States by 2010

© ITC Limited Deployment Principles

© ITC Limited #1 Co Creation  End-to-end solution is designed collaboratively Identify major problems and solve them with efficiency and transparency  When we started, it was with a FMCG approach, with reliance on Market Research Focus Groups  … and then the approach quickly changed to ‘Prototypes’ to enable experience and obtain feedback An iterative approach to build models to solve the real world problems of the Individual and of the Community

© ITC Limited Solution : Access to Price Information – Anytime & In the Village

© ITC Limited Solution : Transparency and Accuracy in Weighment

© ITC Limited Solution : Modern Methods for Quality Assessment

© ITC Limited #2 Must have a well thought out Business Model  Who Pays ?  Who Runs ?  Who Monitors Quality?  What are the Value Propositions to the Stake Holders ?

© ITC Limited The ITC eChoupal Proposition  Step 1: Leveraging ICTs for empowered access to markets (inputs & outputs)  Step 2: Economic viability of IT infrastructure investments is justified through Win-Win business models, hence also scaleable  Step 3: Customer responsive IT infrastructure in the villages facilitates access to supplementary Education, Health, Employment, eGovernance services

© ITC Limited ICTs make it possible !  The eChoupal Price Discovery : Receiving End Vs Empowered The eChoupal Price Discovery Value through Unbundling what was bundled together earlier (Information & Transaction) –Unbundles –Price information is now available at the door step without a necessity to go to mandi –Has an option to fix price at the village itself. However, at the time of selling, still retains the freedom to go to mandi if he believes he gets better offer there.  The Input Transaction The Input Transaction Value through Bundling (Information, Knowledge, Transaction) what was available unbundled earlier –Bundles –Information on Weather and Best Practices from the website –Knowledge of ‘what to do’ from the Experts –Efficient supply platform for inputs purchase that enables aggregation and scale efficiencies

© ITC Limited #3 The Orchestrator  Who Orchestrates the multiple entities? The scale and complexity inherent makes it a high maintenance network  The Orchestrator has to ensure There is a ‘Big Picture’ to what is initiated ‘Changing Needs’ are tracked and are efficiently responded ‘Continuous Innovation’ of the business model is ensured for its long term relevance

© ITC Limited #4 The Infrastructure  Must have Three Tiers Local part for Responsiveness Regional level for Controlling Apex element for Resources Allocation

© ITC Limited 3 X 3 eChoupal Infrastructure  ICT Kiosk with Internet Access In the house of one trained farmer, Sanchalak Within walking distance of target farmers LinkLink  Warehousing Hub / Store Managed by the erstwhile middleman, Samyojak Within tractorable distance of target farmers LinkLink  Collaborative Network of Companies Orchestrated by ITC With a Pan-Indian presence LinkLink

© ITC Limited #5 Capability Building  Build Customer Orientation right across the Chain “Customer is the reason”  … and also the necessary Functional and Process skills Working Capital Demand Creation / assessment  … along with the Soft Skills Feedback Quality / Customer Service

© ITC Limited Taking ICTs & Biz Models to Rural India Training

© ITC Limited Taking ICTs & Biz Models to Rural India PowerConnectivity Website

© ITC Limited eChoupal Sagar Thank You ITC Limited

© ITC Limited

Thank You visit for more details on ITC eChoupalwww.itcportal.com