Can the mobile telecom revolution that has stormed the country go beyond the numbers game ? The subscriber base has reached 450 million and the search for more subscribers and growth will push mobile telephony to penetrate rural markets. The rural mobile teledensity is expected to go up from around 13% currently to 36% by 2013. This network and connectivity could turn out to be a big opportunity to deliver development. Information asymmetry is one gap waiting to be filled. Farmers have shown willingness to pay for some timely and relevant information. This is being seen as a business opportunity.

A two-year pilot project in Maharashtra has been able to demonstrate that there is a need for such services and the cheapest way to deliver them is the mobile network. A mobile phone-based information service has succeeded in delivering personalised agriculture information to 1,10,000 farmers in 10,000 villages. A farmer is offered taluka-specific weather forecasts, prices of crops of their choice from the mandis they want, crop-related information and news through SMS in their own language. This is backed by a call centre operation that works in the local language and interacts with farmers. Timely, accurate and personalised information are expected to help them achieve better yields and secure better prices. There is a database of 150 crops types and coverage of 500 markets and links for expert inputs. They get this for a subscription fee of Rs 75 per month.

Unlike what normally happens to such experiments, this project is now all set to be scaled up and go pan-India. And for this , RML is using the mobile network of Idea. For a company that sells information products from $400 to $4,000, this under $1.5 product is an innovation to find a market at the bottom of the pyramid. They are now taking this to the Philippines, Argentina and other emerging markets. CK Prahalad is impressed enough to include this in his book. The London Business School is also studying this case for its impact on the farming community.

This service can drive up rural mobile teledensity and higher density only will drive the market to provide more services to farmers.

geeta.nair@expressindia.com