After a pilot in the state of Maharashtra, Thomson Reuters has expanded services to the state of Punjab. According to a company release, the service has signed up 50,000 users in Maharashtra, and they intend to expand to a third state by the end of the year. An interesting tidbit - they’re using post offices in Maharashtra to drive registrations.

Now with just 50,000 subscribers in Maharashtra, they’re falling short of the 250-300,000 subscribers that former EVP, Media (Asia) Azhar Rafee had outlined a few months ago in an interview: RML will have to add over 70,000 subscribers a month this year to achieve that goal. Perhaps Punjab, among the richest states in the country, and a largely agricultural state at that, should help them close in on that goal. Rafee had said then that Reuters also intended to make the service - covering 17 different crops - in multiple languages.

I do think that voice based, multilingual, services are a better bet than SMS - since in some states, lack of education is an issue. However, costs will be an issue, and pricing the voice services at Rs. 6 per minute will not work.

Related:
- Bharti Airtel To Focus On Livelihood, Education & Healthcare For Rural Outreach
- Reuters Market Light Now Available in Local Post Offices across Maharashtra

M-Commerce, Mobile, Rural
Tags: Farmers, India, Maharashtra, Punjab, Reuters Market Light, Thomson-Reuters

1. [...] in Punjab. The growth in Maharashtra appears to have picked up in the last two months - when they had only around 50,000 subscribers in Maharashtra. Perhaps the tie-up with the post office [...]

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