With ICT emerging as a buzzword in agri-biz to cash-in on the farmer’s perennial need to cut costs and raise yields, a number of mobile-based agri-information providers have thrown their hat into the ring.

The paid agri-advisory services provided by them include weather, disease and water alerts, latest crop price trends, best time for planting and when to sell, and agri-finance and credit information. These are communicated through SMS and mobile-based IVRS in local language.

But are farmers biting the bait? More important, are they willing to pay for such services?

According to Vijay Pratap Singh Aditya, CEO of Ekgaon Technology – which has been hawking a farm advisory service package called ‘Onefarm’ in Gujarat, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu for the last three years – the answer is a qualified yes.

“Farmers are willing, if the information is customised to their specific soil, crop and weather conditions, besides alerts on stuff such as how much water would be released by the local dam authorities and when it would to reach their respective fields,” he added.

But what is critical is convincing farmers on the utility of such services. “Initially, farmers were unwilling to pay, as the package being offered was very generic with standardised weather and agricultural information sourced through central level bodies. But personalising, localising and specialising the advisory service, coupled with the right pricing points, increased their willingness to pay,” said Mr Aditya.

With 12,000 farmers presently under its fold, Ekgaon plans to grow this to 15 million in five years, which would generate revenues of about Rs 100 crore (last year, the company managed a paltry Rs 1.57 crore). Besides attracting new farmers, it is also important to retain existing ones. “Our retention rate is almost 50 per cent”, he claimed.

Apart from the likes of Ekgaon, there are also established corporates such as Tata Consultancy Services (mKrishi), the Nagarjuna Group (ikisan), Reuters Market Light (RML) and Nokia (Life Tools) that have created mobile agro-advisory platforms. “You always have to allow farmers to try it out first. The willingness to pay comes from their own personal experience of using the service”, noted an official from mKrishi.

Mr Girish Mishra, a farmer from Salon in Uttar Pradesh’s Rae Bareli district, used a free service card from Ekgaon for the kharif paddy season this year. “I wouldn’t mind paying up in the future as long as it costs under Rs 200 for a three-month season”, he said.

So, what is the information that he found useful enough to consider worth paying for? “Earlier, I had not idea about when it would rain, making it difficult to decide whether to water my fields now and make arrangements for diesel accordingly. But their accurate weather alerts has helped me pre-plan and save 70 litres of diesel on my 10 acres of paddy. Since I knew when it would rain, there was no need to irrigate, thereby saving on the labour cost of watering the field as well”, he pointed out.

According to Mr Mishra, the weather info from newspapers or radio are normally for only one way, “whereas I need it for the next four days or more”.

Mr B.V. Natesh, Head of Emerging Markets Services at Nokia India, claimed that farmers who subscribe to the company’s agri-service, are willing to pay for useful information. They even consider the fee paid towards this as a component of their overall investment in a farming season. “This is a positive response that we received from farmers themselves in a pilot project we carried out in Maharashtra”, he added.

“Farmers are a huge market and their need for technology for access to critical information is only going to get bigger in the future. The business mantra would continue to be low margin and high volume,” said Mr Sunil Tambe of RML, which is another player in the business with presence in 14 States.

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