Seems like a day for focus on rural initiatives…MBA Universe has an interview with S Sivakumar, CEO, International Business Division for ITC, on the company’s seven year old rural Internet initiative, e-Choupal. e-Choupal currently deploys 5200 Internet based kiosks, apparently reaching 3.5 million farmers in over 31,000 villages across 8 states, providing farmers with information on mandi prices, good farming practices and place orders for agricultural inputs like seeds and fertilizers. Sivakumar says that they intend to spread the initiative to 100,000 villages in 15 states.
While setting up e-choupal, their main problems were related to infrastructure – power supply, connectivity, bandwidth, as well as teaching first time Internet users in India to use the Internet. They solved the problem with power backup from solar-panel powered batteries, upgrading BSNL exchanges, installation of VSAT equipment, mobile choupals etc. Read the interview here.
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