Introduction
India is one of the emerging markets among the fastest growing countries and the agriculture sector is considered as the backbone of the country’s economy. This is because the agriculture sector of India is contributing about 60% in the growth and more than 72% population of India is associated with the business of agriculture. Therefore, the economic growth plan cannot be designed without getting or achieving growth in this sector.
The agriculture sector of India was previously run manually and few years back such methods of agriculture have been used, which involved greater level of complexity. Previously, the farmers did not have much access to the market situations, therefore in the past farmers did not have much awareness of the market conditions.As a result,they used to get together in a place called Choupal where every farmer discussed his problems and ideas to farm and cultivate the crops. That was the only forum where farmers discussed their ideas and shared their information and got the market related information by sharing their knowledge.
The ITC Company is generating more than 7.5 billion Indian rupees revenue annually. The activities of ICT include span tobacco and cigarettes, paper and packaging, paperboard, hotels and tourism, information technology, and agricultural exports. The ICT Company produces soybeans, coffee and oil seeds for export.
Therefore, ITC is providing attractive initiatives regarding the growth and attaining competitive advantage in the value chain system as compared to its competitors. ICT is also facilitating its farmers with advanced technological systems and it is expected that providing advanced information and technology to its farmers is the biggest challenge that ICT is facing in order to get the competitive advantage over its competitors in the industry.
ITCs motivation for creating the eChoupal
ICT is planning to establish a process which could have a significant impact upon the economy of the country and it is expected that it will add value in the agricultural processes and will reorganize the agricultural processes. For the purpose of reorganizing and re-engineering of the agricultural processes ITC needs information regarding the processes involved in the current supply chain system.
It is expected that the information gathered through this system will help to evaluate different related aspects and it will also help in arranging and appraising the results from this information. In the past farmers did not have the idea of output and expected output, which could be received nowadays by using modern techniques of farming and cultivation. In addition to this,farmers did not have much awareness regarding the threats to crops,the quality of crops and yield from insects and other harmful things how ever now a days it is expected that farmers will be more aware regarding the crops yield, quality and damages occurred through different ways.
In early times, farmers sold crops in the market through commission agents because of the low knowledge and awareness about the market. This way, the commission agents reduced the expected yield by charging them high commissions. These agents also charged heavy commissions from buyers of these crops because in early time both sellers and buyers did not have market knowledge and awareness.
The involvement of the commission agents also has effect on the availability of these crop sin the market and to the buyers as well. It takes about two to three days for the availabilThe ITC eChoupal Initiative Case Solutionity of the crops in markets. These commission agents also pay low prices of crops to the farmers.Also, they even don’t pay for the crops on net.
It is expected that this all happened only due to the lack or low information regarding market and its conditions. All these were the factors en couraging ICT to establish such a process or procedure, which provides the farmers more access and flexibility.Also,it provides solution to the major problems of farmers regarding low access to the market and being paid low in return to the high quality crops.
It encourages ICT to formulate such a system of supply chain which adds values to those activities that are profit generating and to remove those values, which are causing loss to farmers. These factors encourage ICT to initiate the eChoupal in order to make the farmers aware about the market and information related to the market.It. is expected that it would help the farmers to get better information regarding the market and will clearly add value to the revenues and the information flows regarding the processes of farming.
OLD PHYSICAL FLOWS AND INFORMATION FLOWS
In the previous years,farmers used historical information and outdated methods of framings due to the lack of information as the farmers did not have access to the market information and conditions. Farmers only used the information shared in the place called Choupal and used those processes and techniques of farming which are discussed in Choupal..............................
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