E-choupal connects the farmers and the consumers only through one corporate company without all the middlemen via the internet. This encourages the farmers to produce more and quality produce as they have an increase in their incomes also these products are now available at more affordable prices for the consumer. In this article, we are going to discuss Everything You Need To Know About it.What is E-Choupal?
E-choupal is an agribusiness in India launched by ITC Limited in 2000, it directly links with the rural farmers via internet for agriculture and aquaculture products like soybeans, coffee, prawns and a variety of other crops. E-choupal helps solve the challenges by Indian agriculture, characterized by fragmented farms, weak infrastructure and the involvement of intermediaries. It uses Internet kiosks in villages which are run by local farmers-sanchalaks-trained by ITC, this enables their community to access information in their language regarding- Weather
- Knowledge on scientific farm practices
- Risk Management
- Purchasing the produce
Why E-choupal?
E-choupal unleashes the potential of Indian farmer who has been trapped in a vicious cycle of
- Low risk taking ability
- Low investment
- Low productivity
- Weak market orientation
- Low value addition
- Low margin
This market-led business model can enhance the competitiveness of Indian agriculture and trigger a cycle of
- High Productivity
- High Income
- Better Farmer Risk Management
- High Quality
- Large Investments
How a farmer can go about selling his produce?
The farmer has to visit the sanchalak who will give him a note which includes his name, village, particulars of quality assessment, approximate quantity and conditional price. The farmer then takes this note along with his produce to the nearest ITC rural services hub called Choupal Saagar, which is within 30km radius. Testing of produce is done by trained technicians and the farmer is paid within 2 hours.
In this method, the farmer is no more tied under the local traders and brokers. Also the farmer can sell the produce to anyone he wishes and is not tied under any contract by ITC.
E-Choupal 1.0:
It was the start of E-choupal and its idea was to give small farmers power to sell their produce directly with a higher income and get access to information necessary to boost their methods.
E-Choupal 2.0:
By 2006, this initiative had spread across 4 million farmers. By this time the network offered weather prices of the produce on a particular day, cattle care, water harvesting and women
employment.
E-Choupal 3.0:
This version came up with the idea to anchor new businesses with the farmers itself. Use of Analytics and two-way interactions with the farmers.
E-Choupal 4.0:
This is a mobile-platform version which aims to get the most out of the farmers and connect as many as E-Choupal can.What next for E-Choupal?
This initiative reaches out to over 4 million farmers in over 35000 villages through 6100 kiosks across 10 states. ITC targets to get 10 million farmers by 2022 with its E-choupal 4.0, which is a mobile platform and considering India as the 2nd highest internet using country in the world, it seems that ITC will reach the target without a sweat.
This initiative is one to watch for and should be spread around to boost the Indian economy and the ever deteriorating conditions of our farmers. Farmers will get the price they deserve rather than pay for selling off their own produce.
Hello people, I am Himanshu Rathod. I am pursuing B.E. in Computer Engineering. I like to be around my laptop for games and codes. I like to write about the schemes the government comes up with, the tech around the world and sports.
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