Information and entertainment-starved Indian farmers have a new suitor at their door. No, it?s not just a bevy of television makers and direct-to-home service providers beating a rural path, but content creators such as Thomson Reuters and cellphone maker Nokia, who have sniffed a big opportunity here. Growing rural incomes, coupled with rising mobile penetration, make for a robust business case for delivering local, usable content cheaply over the mobile?anything from weather updates, farming tips, mandi prices to English language tutorials.

Though most ?rural content? initiatives have yet to scale up substantially, what gives strength to the model is the sheer heft of the rural opportunity?six lakh-odd villages, 144 million households, 730 million people and a market worth over Rs 14 lakh-crore! There are over 141.68 million mobile users in rural India, though penetration (at 17.22 wireless teledensity) still lags behind urban areas (94.98 wireless teledensity), as per latest figures available from TRAI.

The Thomson Reuters offering?Reuters Market Light (RML)?for example, has grown from a pilot project in Maharashtra two years ago to a service available in more than 10,000 villages across 12 states. Similarly, Nokia Life Tools (NLT), which also began its pilot in five districts of Maharashtra last year, is now available across India. Why, even chipmaker Qualcomm has a pilot running in some coastal villages in Tamil Nadu!

These companies have latched on to a niche, providing hyper-localised information. So, information about a cattle vaccination camp or a transport strike that would affect farmers in a particular location, for example, are among the news staples provided under these services. NLT, for instance, uses pin code as an indicator of location to provide weather forecasts for a 50-km radius, or at the taluka level. Qualcomm?s Fisher Friend service gives information about sea wave height, good places to fish and going prices in various marts.

The information network

While companies such as Nokia and Qualcomm have the technology to disburse these services, they depend on an intricate network of organisations and people to generate, vet, package and disseminate content. BV Natesh, head of emerging market services at Nokia India, explains that ?knowledge exists in a very vast ecosystem? already. At NLT, a lot of this information converges and is then put to test by a dedicated team. ?It is always a challenge how the information comes through?voice, fax and e-mail. Few agencies put this information up on their websites,? he says.

Once information is gathered from multiple sources, including government agencies such as the Met Department and private firms such as crop protection company Syngenta, it is aggregated, vetted and published. ?We have set up a knowledge desk in Bangalore manned by domain experts,? says Natesh. NLT has a network of at least 26 partners in its agri-services alone.

Says RML managing director Amit Mehra, ?We have an extensive network of several hundred content creators.? The service depends on dedicated RML reporters and a network of international reporters who also help add value to the service. RML?s content management team sits in Pune and Bangalore.

Qualcomm has partnered with Chennai-based MS Swaminathan Research Foundation to generate the information. Its technology partners for disbursing the content include Astute Technology, which is the developer of the BREW platform, and Tata Teleservices.

Local content, local models

?We talk about giving Internet access to the next billion. For rural consumers, NLT is the browser. It is scrollable, there are a lot of icons, especially for weather-related information,? says Natesh. He says the company has tried to recreate the tabular rate charts the consumers are used to seeing on blackboards at their local mandis by using the same lingo and units so that there?s a minimal learning curve for the farmer.

At RML, hyper-localised content is delivered to mobile phones in an SMS format. For instance, updates on weather are automatically sent to the subscriber. RML also offers personalised information, which is provided on the voice platform via call centres. Qualcomm?s Fisher Friend service processes complex information such as sea wave heights and fish shoals and breaks it down into tips that are accessible to local fishermen communities. According to the company website, the service was announced in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami and fishermen safety is a key objective.

Osama Manzar, founder and director of the New Delhi-headquartered Digital Empowerment Foundation, points to the huge pull on the demand side for more information, which is driving private players to service this market. ?There is a huge opportunity here and also a huge gap in the government?s efforts (to tap this),? he adds. The foundation has this year instituted the m-Billionth award to recognise efforts in generating mobile content and applications for reaching the masses faster and cheaper. Manzar opines that companies such as cellphone maker Nokia and wireless technology developer Qualcomm, for whom content generation is not a core competency, is an attempt by industry to show the way.

?They?re doing pilots to show that this can be done,? he says.

To be sure, for some companies providing services in the non-core competency area of hyper-localised content generation may just be a platform for touting their technology offerings. The pilots may be seen as a way to encourage others to develop more such services, and give these companies business by using the applications developed and tested by them.

Manzar says Qualcomm?s Fisher Friend, which was announced almost five years ago, has not scaled up beyond a few fishermen villages in Tamil Nadu. Qualcomm executives were not available for comment or an e-mail or telephonic interview for this story.

While acknowledging the usefulness of a two-way process of exchanging information, Natesh says the way information is currently travelling from the ground up to Nokia is only through intermediaries. The volunteers interact with the farmers and bring back inputs to the knowledge desk. These service providers say the government should also make provisions for professional information services that will connect the farming community to the markets. Clearly, if agriculture is to be a remunerative business, farmers should be able to take decisions based on accurate, relevant, unbiased and timely information.

Nokia Life Tools

Service: Its bouquet of agri services includes weather updates (specific to a 50-km radius or at the taluka level), agricultural news, tips on and prices of up to three pre-selected agricultural commodities in a tabular format familiar to farmers. Allows users to check prices from a remote location, obviating the need for farmers to travel to the mart or depend on local traders to determine the going prices for agri-commodities at various points of sale.

Delivery Mode: Local language-enabled Nokia handsets, say, the 2700C model

Availability: Across India

Launch: June 2009

Cost: NLT?s basic and premium services in agriculture cost Rs 30 and Rs 60, respectively. But instead of charging the full monthly rental of Rs 30 for the basic service at the start of the month, the company deducts Rs 10 for the first 10 days. It sends out a message on the ninth day to reconfirm subscription for the rest of the month.

Expansion Plans: Research underway to explore opportunities in content generation for the fishing, poultry sectors.

Qualcomm Fisher Friend*

Service: Qualcomm?s array of content services spans its Fisher Friend application directed towards fisher folk villages in Tamil Nadu to an Internet-based educational reach programme in four states?Gujarat, Karnataka, Orissa and Rajasthan. The US-headquartered technology company has partnered with the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation for collating information for the Fisher Friend service, and has tied up with the Azim Premji Foundation for the education reach plan. As per the website, services include weather updates, going prices at local fish marts, information on sea wave heights and tips on where to fish, etc.

Delivery Mode: 3G-enabled CDMA handsets

Launch: Fall 2009

Cost: Currently between Rs 25 and

Rs 30 a month

Expansion Plans: Not available

*Details sourced from company website and wireless reach programme brochures.

Reuters Market Light

Service: RML provides weather forecasts within a 50-km radius, including details such as relative humidity, temperature and rainfall; market prices of more than 200 different crops from 1,000 markets across the country; agriculture news and tips.

Delivery Mode: RML is compatible with all service providers across all handsets

Availability: Over 10,000 villages across 12 states, including Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Karnataka

Launch: 2007; sold over two-lakh RML cards

Cost: Rs 250 for three months

Expansion Plans: Looking to expand service to African and Latin American countries with large agricultural base.