The Hindu Business Line : Airtel rolls out mobile scheme for AP farmers

“This joint venture will harness the power of mobile telephony and empower rural farmers in the State. They will have access to information relating to farmers through SMS services and call centres.”

Our Bureau

Hyderabad, June 20 Bharti Airtel on Friday announced the launch of its Grameena Mobile Kranti scheme in league with Iffco, wherein mobile phone services are customised to the requirements of farmers with local calls at 50 paise and SMS alerts.

The combination has so far launched these services across 13 States and now plans to target over 1,021 societies of Iffco offering its members mobile services. Since its launch, already over a lakh farmers have gone mobile.

The Chief Executive Officer of Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel, Andhra Pradesh, Mr Elango T., said “This joint venture will harness the power of mobile telephony and empower rural farmers in the State. They will have access to information relating to farmers through SMS services and call centres.”

This project seeks to strengthen the cooperative movement in rural India by empowering the farmers through information.

Here the focus is on communication reaching out on the latest farm-related information and thereby empower them, he said.

The Director of Iffco, Mr. K. Somasekhara Rao, said “Iffco is an organisation of the farmers and for the farmers and works on the model of cooperatives. We feel there is a great opportunity in telecom sector going to rural India to create new business opportunities through farmers’ cooperatives.”

Mr Rao said that work on the 3,000-acre agriculture food processing special economic near Nellore in Andhra Pradesh is set to start shortly and Iffco is in talks with several players to convince them to locate their facilities in the SEZ.

“It is proposed to invest about Rs 2,200 crore in the SEZ, which will focus mainly on agriculture produce and processing. We are in talks with Reliance and others for gas supply, which would enable us to set up a fertiliser plant in the SEZ,” he said.

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