The Hindu Business Line : PACS comes the reply

CoOptions Technologies says its drive to empower farmers is paying off. Software is now helping to change the way primary agricultural cooperative societies function.

Subrahmanyam Yadavalli

IT'S been a tough but enjoyable six years for CoOptions Technologies Ltd since it took off as a start-up focussed on software solutions to empower farmers and transform rural India.

Reliving the start, and also looking ahead, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of CoOptions, Subrahmanyam Yadavalli, says "when companies were focussing their attention on winning deals from the US, we decided to stay focussed on India and only rural areas. This strategy seems to have helped us chart out a steady growth."

Then and now, what has helped root the company in the IT space is its commitment to change the rural scene through use of technology. Towards this end, it has already put in place a software-based system to streamline the working of primary agricultural cooperative societies (PACS).

This system enables farmers to get the latest updates on loans, credits, crops, simply whatever concerns them, at the click of a mouse at kiosks at the cooperative societies.

Subrahmanyam says the company expects to cover 2,500 primary agriculture cooperative societies in India. Founded with seed funding support from the co-founder of Infosys Technologies, N.S. Raghavan, the company has taken to specialising in product development and rural infrastructure development, focussing mainly on rural information and communication technologies.

In the last two years, CoOptions has developed products that can be custom-tuned for rural applications and help in better delivery of rural credit.

In the cooperative sector, the company has enhanced its flagship product Pax@2002 in terms of technical features and user friendliness. This helps better report generation, and comes with broadened functionality and built-in security features, he says.

The Karshaka Parishad Project, under the guidance of the Andhra Pradesh Cooperative Bank, Department of Cooperation, and the AP Government, has entered its fourth year. This project, taken up under the public-private partnership model, helps primary agricultural cooperative societies to better manage their business through computerisation.

In about 158 societies located in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, credit of close to Rs 400 crore is being delivered on time with 100 per cent accounting accuracy, he says.

For the first time in the history of primary agricultural cooperative societies, the balance sheets of several societies have been made available as on March 31 last year. The company is in parleys with several State Governments to take this success story forward, he says.

Significantly, the audit-cycle times of these cooperatives too have come down to two weeks from 6-8 weeks earlier. Farmers have 100 per cent accurate information about their loan repayment in their local language. As a result, about 12 to 18 per cent increase in overall efficiencies in service delivery in these cooperative societies has been reported.

This has also improved the profitability and viability of these societies, eliminating middlemen, he says.

Citing the case of Bukkasagra, a primary agricultural cooperative society based in Karnataka, that moved from a Rs 2-crore turnover to Rs 12 crore in a span of three years, Subrahmanyam says a significant part of this growth has been attributed to this solution.

Similar examples abound in the West and East Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh, he says.

As a spin off, close to 2.5 lakh Kisan Credit Card loans are maintained in Andhra Pradesh by this system that monitors the credit history and credit-worthiness of the farmers. A third-party evaluation of the impact of this technology on the micro-economy is now under way and the results are expected later this year.

CoOptions recently won the CSI-Nihilent `best e-governance technical company' award. It has also bagged some prestigious overseas projects, a vindication of its focus and strategy, says Subrahmanyam.

It has won a $4.74-million project in Sri Lanka wherein the project mandate is to network the National Water Supply and Drainage Board. It also involves developing an enterprise-wide IT solution across the nation. The project was initiated in August 2005 and will be completed in two years.

To implement this project based on the onsite and offshore model, the company has expanded its infrastructure and plans similar initiatives in some of the neighbouring countries where it has bagged projects, he says.

Being a pioneer in rural computing and applications that are of importance to a large section of the global population, CoOptions plans an aggressive market expansion and penetration, he says.

vrishi@thehindu.co.in

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