I had a fairly long chat with the Reuters Market Light executives at India Telecom 2008: little over a year after the service was launched, the SMS based Market information service for farmers in India has crossed 100,000 users, with around 91,500 subscribers in Maharashtra, and 8,500 subscribers 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 helped. 

Thomson Reuters has aggressive expansion plans: they’re launching the service in the agriculture dependent state of Haryana in January, and then to 9 states across the country by the end of 2009. In the north, they intend to cover Harayana (January), Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, apart from Punjab where they are already present. In the west they’re targeting Gujarat, apart from Maharashtra, where they had launched; Madhya Pradesh in Central India is also a part of the plans, and the company is yet to decide between Karnataka and Andra Pradesh in the South.

RML covers 54 crops/commodities in 270 mandis. The service offers farmers weather information specific to their taluka (district) early in the morning (around 7:30am), market prices from 3 selected Mandis (crop marketplaces) and tips related to specific crops (chosen by the farmer) in the afternoon, and relevant national and international news in the evening. They have a tie-up with the Maharashtra Krishi Panan Mandal in Maharashtra, and the Punjab Mandi Board in Punjab. An example of how the service helps - timely information of the fact that Cotton was being exported from India allowed one farmer to delay sales of his cotton crop by a month; prices rose and he made a profit.

Multiple SMS’ are sent throughout the day, in the local language. Reuters is also increasing the plan offering from 3 months, to 6 and 12 month subscription plans. Click here for a larger view of what the text messages look like, in Marathi. Consumers sign up by filling up a form, or via a toll free number. Reuters has around 40 people on the ground in Punjab, for signups.

RML has a editorial team in place for selecting relevant information for specific areas, including inputs on subsidies, special crop schemes…the kind of information, according to the RML executive we spoke to, one rarely sees on TV or in newspapers. They have tweaked their service based on feedback from 400-700 customers chosen every week. 

Related:

- Reuters Market Light Expands To Punjab; Only 50,000 Subs
- Bharti Airtel To Focus On Livelihood, Education & Healthcare For Rural Outreach
- Reuters Market Light Now Available in Local Post Offices across Maharashtra

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

– BSNL has brought within the “reach of broadband”, 30,500 villages, and installed Village Public Telephones in 54635 villages, using money from the USO (Universal Services Obligation) Fund that mobile consumers had been contributing to. 5000 villages are being provided telephony using satellite technology - Digital Satellite Phone Terminals, and some via the mobile network. Bear in mind that villages have been brought under the “reach of broadband”, and not necessarily been provided broadband services. The Common Services Centers (CSCs) which we’ve covered before is dependent on BSNL rolling out broadband services. Do recall that Aruna Sundararajan, CEO of the CSC project had announced that BSNL plans to provide broadband to 30,000 CSCs by June.

– Rural expansion: The government is preparing to launch the second phase of its rural mobile expansion, covering villages with a population of 500; around 2 lakh villages in all. Around 11000 towers will be installed in a year and a half. In Phase 1, BSNL has set up 102 of the 6175 towers it had bid for (using the USO Fund), GTL Infrastructure has set up 371 of 421, Hutchison Essar has set up 242 of 752, National Information Technologies has set up 16 of 384, Quipo Telecom has set up 84 of 88, while Reliance Communications has set up 245 of 472…no prizes for guessing who the laggards are.

A CSC essentially is a kiosk in a rural district, which allows online bill payments, booking tickets, applying for jobs, searching for market information and selling of local produce. CSCs are going to be managed by a Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE), which serves as the nodal point for services and government schemes.

In its earnings release, BSE listed SREI Infrastructure Finance mentioned that its subsidiary SREI Sahaj e-Village (Sahaj) had won bids for CSCs in 6 states - 4937 in West Bengal, 5565 in Bihar, 2282 in Orissa, 2833 in Assam, 8118 in Uttar Pradesh and 1045 in Tamil Nadu - a total of 24780 kiosks. These will cover 150,000 villages, and a population of over 21 crore. Frankly, if that’s what the government has targeted, I think it’s insufficient - approximately 1 kiosk for every 8475 people. Bridging the digital divide, indeed. Sahaj will be investing Rs. 1000 crores on CSCs. Hughes Communications India has signed up with Sahaj to supply 17,000 VSAT connections. Sahaj will also set up kiosks in Bihar, in Uttar Pradesh, in Tamil Nadu and in Assam.

Other companies that are setting up CSCs include CMS Computers (4962 CSCs) and Zoom Developers (1314 CSCs) in Orissa, and RCom in West Bengal. As per this article in DataQuest, the progress of CSCs has been rather slow.

Related
– Bharti Airtel To Focus On Livelihood, Education & Healthcare For Rural Outreach
– Nokia To Target Rural India Market For Growth, With Microfinance Options, Services

Sanjay Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer for Mobile Services at telecom operator Bharti Airtel said that company will focus on three key services for Rural India - enabling Livelihood, Education and Healthcare. Gupta called mobile connectivity in Rural India the next Harit Kranti (Green Revolution). Gupta shared several examples of a video study in Rural India about the issues some existing consumers face, of users who

• Have to go to another nearby village to even charge a mobile handset, and pay Rs. 20 to use a battery to recharge the phone — just because neither village as electricity.
• Feel uncomfortable talking to Airtels customer care executives - because they’re speaking in English, or just because the phone is being answered by a woman
• Have to travel 15km to recharge top-up their account (thanks Shefaly) a mobile handset because of distribution issues
• Find the IVRS menu confusing, and end up buying products by accidentally activating services that they did not need.

Another indication of issues with rural outreach was outlined by Prakash Ranjalkar, COO of GTL Infrastructure, who said that even to operate telecom towers, because of lack of rural electrification, they need to transfer diesel 30 km twice a day.

Sanjay Gupta outlined the following issues that need to be dealt with. The first challenge is to network rural markets. The challenge is not as much in the network, but in the infrastructure to connect villages. Also, mobiles are not like soaps - telecom companies need to adhere to Know Your Customer (KYC) norms for getting user information back to the company for registration and verification.

Airtel is investing in a hub-and-spoke model, so that wherever there is a matchbox being sold, the company will have a presence. They’re planning to cover 2 million outlets. The company has to:

• Make it simpler for people to use services - simplify the service plans
• Make it easy to recharge, using smaller denominations of Rs. 5 and Rs. 10
• Build relevance. Airtel has tied up with IFFCO (a fertilizeer company) to provide content that is relevant to the rural population. Gupta shared a call center call where the executive farmers with issues like market (mandi) prices, assistance with farming technique, weather forecasts, trouble-shooting farming issues. The solutions will be sent back via Voice SMS. The right alliances are important.

Gupta shared an audio clip of a voice SMS, offering a farmer a solution to deal with a problem of the yellowing of the leaves of a particular vegetable were yellowing.

Related: Lighting Up Rural India