What happened to eChoupal, the ambitious India government plan to revolutionize agriculture? - Vulcan Post. Imagine you’re a farmer in a village in India, with little or no access to the cloud which we all live on these days.
There’s a mandi (market) 20 km from your farm, and for any information you need, that’s how far you need to go. When you harvest your crops, you go 20 km out to a mandi where, say, 600 other farmers are also competing to sell their produce. The middleman is at an advantage – he sets the price, you take it, no matter how unfair or low. You trudge 20 km back to your home with very little money to show for your months of hard labour and care. E-choupals dream gets hazy. Embedding Sustainability in Business. E-Choupal ITC e-Choupal is an innovative market-led business model designed to enhance the competitiveness of Indian agriculture. e-Choupal leverages the power of Information and Digital Technology and the internet to empower small and marginal farmers with a host of services related to know how, best practices, timely and relevant weather information, transparent discovery of prices and much more. e-Choupals not only connect farmers with markets but also allow for a virtual integration of the supply chain and create significant efficiencies in the traditional system.
A business concept embedded with social goals, e-Choupal was designed to empower farmers and triggers a virtuous cycle of higher productivity, higher incomes, enlarged capacity for farmer risk management, and thereby larger investments to enable higher quality and productivity. These interventions have helped transform village communities into vibrant economic organisations, by enhancing incomes and co-creating markets.
ITC e-choupal.