2012

airtel IFFCO JV

airtel iCreate 2012

Industry overview
70% of Indias population is rural with agriculture as the main occupation, almost one third of the worlds poor also reside here. 88% of nearly 240 million of Indias farmers have small land holdings (less than 2 hectares). Agriculture does not prove a viable occupation and most earn up to US$2 daily. The lack of timely & relevant agricultural information is felt to be a major impediment for farmers in India. The scarcity of information makes it very difficult to make informed decisions on subjects ranging from the choice of crops to be sown to methods of disposal of their produce. Two of the major stakeholders in rural India The Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) and Bharti airtel decided to address this challenge. IFFCO is the worlds leading cooperative owned by 40,000 village level cooperative societies. Bharti airtel is the leading telecom player in India with more than 190 million subscribers. Each of the entities has a demonstrated track record for undertaking welfare activities for the poor of the country. Together they created the IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited (IKSL), with a vision to leverage the ubiquitous low-cost mobile phone as an essential power house of knowledge for farmers.

Business Overview
To help improve the quality of living of poor and illiterate farmers in India the empowering Farmers Mobile Phone initiative was developed to provide agricultural information via mobile phone to aid famers in developing a more productive, profitable and sustainable agricultural sector in India. The special service to farmers includes 5 Free Voice Messages daily in 10 local languages on areas such as crop advisory, weather related, market prices, animal husbandry. There is also a farmer help-line operated by experts that farmers can call and obtain information or advice. Additional messages are provided on womens issues, health, employment opportunities and governmen t schemes to positively impact the rural economy. The challenge last year was that only 25% of the total base listened to the content regularly and also we needed to expand our base to much wider rural audience. We initiated lot of effective steps on content improvement and customer acquisition through which now we have more than 30% pickup and 40% listenership. We have also been able to not only steadily increase our listening base but also rural base through various communities.

airtel iCreate 2012

Current business situation

Currently the service provided is restricted to the IKSL managed customer base and a free service. We would like to monetize this service by taking the content to the entire rural base across the country. However, the challenge is to find the right approach and right content. Our initiatives so far have not resulted in significant results in terms of customer adoption and revenue. Therefore, the case is to identify the content to be provided by IKSL that is relevant for monetization for which the customers feel Value for Money. Also a complete business plan needs to be made which should be sufficiently backed by primary and secondary research and data on the suitable price point, right channel, right medium, and complete go to the market strategy, innovations in terms of reaching out to the customer, marketing and promotion. All in all it should be a financially and practically viable plan to reach out to maximum rural customers and make them use our content for their benefit at a reasonable and acceptable cost so that it makes a business sense.