Date:28/02/2007 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2007/02/28/stories/2007022801351100.htm

e-Choupal, a novel pvt sector initiative: Survey

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Kolkata Feb. 27 The e-Choupal agricultural marketing model of ITC Ltd has been mentioned in the Economic Survey 2006-07 as among the "novel private sector initiatives" aimed at improving the marketing channels in agriculture.

The Economic Survey for 2006-07 makes mention of ITC's e-Choupal as a business platform consisting of a set of organisational subsystems and interfaces connecting farmers to global markets. It states that such a common structure can be leveraged to procure/provide a host of product and services for the farmer as a producer as well as a consumer. The e-Choupal business platform consists of three layers each at different levels of geographic aggregation. Each of the layers is characterised by three key elements.

These include the infrastructure - physical or organisational - through which transactions take place, the entity orchestrating the transactions and the geographical coverage of the layer. The first layer consists of the village-level kiosks with Internet access (or e-Choupal), managed by an ITC trained local farmer - called a Sanchalak - and within walking distance of each target farmer. The relatively sparse population density in rural India justified the location of one e-Choupal per cluster of five villages.

The second layer consists of a bricks-and-mortar infrastructure called `hubs' managed by the traditional intermediary who has local knowledge/skills called a `Samyojak" in his new role and within "tractorable" distance (25-30km) of the target farmer.