The Hindu Business Line : Rural India calls

“While there is no such thing as a rural phone, the rural consumers have specific needs. So we will shortly be launching two models.” Raghuvesh Sarup

V.V. Krishnan

Hello! A migrant shepherd in Haryana calls up his family back home in Gujarat.

Rasheeda Bhagat

While Nokia India was on one of its recent drives to increase its market share in the rural mobile telephony sector of India, Muthuraman, an agricultural worker in a village in Madurai district showed interest in getting a mobile phone. “He said he has six sisters in nearby villages, and they are the only ones he needs to keep in touch with, particularly because their children love him. So I gave him my phone and said, call one of them,” recalls Raghuvesh Sarup , Product Market Head, Nokia India Mobile Phones Division.

“He kept dialling the number and kept disconnecting. So I said: ‘What’s the problem?’ And he said: ‘But the dial tone is not coming, so I am not able to complete the call. Then I had to tell him that in a cell phone you don’t have to wait for a dial tone. We don’t realise it, but this was an alien concept to him; these might be little things but need to be addressed for rural consumers.”

By spotting little details and increasing the comfort levels of rural users Nokia hopes to increase its market share in rural India estimated currently at 10 per cent; “our market share in India is 75 per cent.”

After voice, sms is the second most explored feature in mobile phones and Nokia is exploring ways to ensure ease of operation, particularly for rural users, by offering 10 different languages; some models also have bilingual keymats. “The Indian market provides a unique challenge because we seem to live in two different time or market zones — rural and urban.”

To position itself effectively in the rural market, Nokia has taken interesting initiatives. “While there is no such thing as a rural phone, the rural consumers have specific needs. So for the Indian rural market we will shortly be launching two instruments.” One is Nokia 1208; it has a colour screen, will cost around Rs 2,000 and contains features rural customers would welcome; one is a flashlight. “In rural areas ease of operation and utility value are important; many times when a rural user buys a mobile he is getting not just a phone but the first durable. So in lieu of the first bicycle or first alarm clock, or radio, you have a mobile phone!”

These models include a comprehensive demo on how to make calls; “we assume that anyone can pick up a mobile phone and dial a number, but it is not that easy for everyone.” Apart from bilingual keymats, Nokia is also offering single piece, dust-free keymats without space between the keys and the instrument has an anti-slip texture.

Rural Usage

Sarup says there are two kinds of users in villages. “First, those who haven’t had a mobile phone experience and who inevitably said the phone is for talking. But the minute they get a mobile phone, we know the state of happiness at just being able to talk goes away quickly.” Also, different situations dictate different usages. One is the emergency situation; the child is sick and the doctor is in town, and has to be called. Then there is the hassle of getting the network. “In places where there is no tower, you’ll find people at the starting point of the race; to get the signal and dial! Also, the insight they give us on their consumption pattern is amazing. Most of them talk about the dependence on rain being an occupational hazard.”

Then there is the connectivity aspect; some States have better network coverage than others; Tamil Nadu and other southern states, as well as Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana and Delhi are much better connected.

Affordability

On affordability, he says one of the Nokia models for rural markets is 2630 costing around Rs 5,000. This is quite a slick model with only 9 mm thickness. When you comment that with prevalent agri distress, only rich farmers would be able to afford it, he says, “Not really; in villages the ownership concept is very different from urban areas. It’s a community tool in many villages which have the concept that everything is owned by everyone; it’s a lovely culture and more inclusive than we’ll ever be able to have. They say with pride we have five bikes in our village, seven cycles, four TVs. They share more easily than we do and their integrity in using community tools is amazing.”

The 2630 model, he adds, is a mass market product with a camera and a steel back. A lot of people’s reaction is they’d rather buy this than a cheaper model. Apart from the emergency use criteria, a phone is both a tool and symbol of economic progress. “When I have this symbol in my hand I gain a respect and credibility I do not enjoy otherwise; the mantra is if I have the substance, why not the style?”

For many rural users, a mobile phone makes good business sense. Raghu, a barber he met in a Gujarat village, said he could do up to 10 haircuts a day thanks to his mobile phone, a several fold increase over his existing business. He got calls from nearby villages for his service!

Similarly Liaqat, a watermelon farmer in Western UP, who lives in a joint family with 33 members — seven are his brothers — uses the mobile phone to run his sales. The family’s monthly income is Rs 21,400 and their phone bill is Rs 500, with most of the calls being made to arrange transport. Sarup says cent per cent rural phone users in India have prepaid subscriptions; “95 per cent subscribers in India prefer prepaid service because of the flexibility associated with this service.”

Also the mentality in villages is that hath ka paisa kharch karo and in farming households, there is nothing like a regular monthly income. “We also realise that with rural incomes being seasonal — quarterly, half yearly or annual — things like EMI are not going to work in this market.”

Many rural users opt for lifetime prepaid packages which provide more flexibility; one month he can buy a recharge coupon for Rs 200 and the next month it could only be Rs 20. “They spend at their discretion, but will never say ‘no’ to a neighbour who needs to call a doctor. The 1208 model has two phone books or memories so that two people can use one phone.”

Market share

Ten per cent of Nokia’s sales come from rural areas; “using the consumer understanding and loyalty which has given us a 75 per cent share in the Indian market, we want to increase our presence in rural India. As they say when you peel the onion, you get to see various facets; similarly we find that people more likely to have mobile phones are those who engage in more than one profession.” For example, after the crop cycle is over, many farmers tend to do something else, generally outside their base town, at which point the mobile connection is very important. “I asked a lot of consumers, including Muthuraman, to tell me what the word ‘mobile’ means to them, and many of them say ‘it makes my family near.”

Missed calls!

If you thought missed calls is a purely Indian phenomenon, think again. Says Sarup, “I too thought so but was amazed to see this phenomenon in Africa. There they call it ‘flashing’, and the basic message is ‘Call me back’. Coming to Indian rural users, some of them even have codes around a missed call, and they normally don’t pick up the phone unless they know who it is from — something you or I do when travelling abroad! An old man whose daughter lives in another village complained: ‘My son-in-law thinks I’m very prosperous; whenever I try to give a missed call to my daughter, he picks it up and my money is gone!”

On rural mobile users’ comfort level with the sms service, he says they are more comfortable forwarding existing short messages. “They find that very easy to do; they keep them saved. Last year I found everybody carrying a little black diary with their telephone numbers; they had fed in only a few key numbers on their phones. But this year the black book has entirely disappeared; now they are storing all the numbers on the phone.”

But, adds Sarup, these are the literate users. “The large part of rural population that is illiterate has given us the kind of suggestions and solutions which are truly marvellous in the world of marketing. They said give us symbols; a flower means my best friend, the leaf I’ll use for my wife, a pod for somebody else, a bee for my daughter, etc. They’ve got it all figured out.”

So will Nokia implement these suggestions in their future models?

“Well, we’ll try; if this adds to the ease of operation, which is the most paramount for them.”

Sarup says understanding the rural market is “as complex as understanding the urban market. But then you have to be true to what you are saying, you can’t pay lip service, promise something and deliver something else. Also, everyone is touchy these days. You can’t have a phone just for kids or women. Because women will say who asked you to design for us? Similarly a rural customer says how can you design a phone only for me? Am I some kind of a jungle animal? So our endeavour is to make sure that we market for everyone.”

As less than five per cent of the rural market has been penetrated so far, there is a huge potential for mobile instrument makers like Nokia, he adds.

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