vaDavid Lemuel E. Garcia

10564721      BS-IM

ITC e-Choupal Story:

Profitable Rural Transformation

1. What is the innovation of the e-Choupal?

            - e-Choupal’s information centers link to the internet, represent an approach to seamlessly connect subsistence farmers with large firms, current agricultural research and global markets.

2. Discuss the paradox of Indian Agriculture?

            - Agriculture is vital to India, It contributes to 23% of the gross domestic product, feeds a billion people, and employs 66% of the workforce.

3. Why is soya an important innovation in the Indian oilseed complex?

            - Because of its low oil content, soya-oil extraction is done almost exclusively by solvent extraction process.

4. Describe the marketing processs before the introduction of e-Choupal.

            - The farmers traditionally keep a small amount for their personal consumption and get the produce processed in a small-scale job-shop crushing-plant called a ghani.

5. Why is the mandi not an optimal procurement channel?

            - The real sources of inefficiency are the price and quality distortions caused by the agents strangehold on the market and ITC’s distance from the farmer.

6. What were the advantages of ITC's competitors? How did ITC address them?

            - Horizontal spread was addressed though customer relationship management, vertical presence, old and family-owned, risk management and other advantages were addressed by systematically deploying IT to their business.

7. How did ITC "re-engineer as opposed to reconstruct"?

            -Avoid reinventing the wheel in areas where ITC would not be able to add value through its presence and co-opts members of the rural landscape, thereby making their expertise available to ITC and foreclosing the same from ITC’s competition.

8. How did ITC "address the whole, not just a part"?

            - The village trader services the spectrum of the farmer’s needs. He is a centralized provider of cash, seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and marketing. Two competitive benefits where being enjoyed by the trader in doing this.

9. Was it wise for ITC to install an IT-driven solution where most people would not?

            - Yes. Because delivery of real-time information was independent from the transaction and facilitation of collaboration among the many parties required to fulfill the farmer’s needs are being addressed.

10. Why does the ITC insist that the sanchalaks NOT give up farming?

            - Because of trust, and other things like ITC did not have to invest in building and securing physical infrastructure, sanchalaks are trained in computer operation and can acts as a familiar and therefore approachable human interface and because ITC expects to leverage the power of the small-scale entrepreneur.

11. Why did the samyojaks introduce the ITC to the sanchalaks?

            - A conscious effort was and is made to divert revenue to samyoiaks, and every effort was made to maintain the level of samyojaks trust.

12. Describe the new ITC value chain. How different is it from the former value chain?

            - pricing, inbound logistics, inspection grading, weighing payment, hub logistics. Very different because before, the pricing was so static that it was changed every other day.

13. What is the social impact of the e-Choupals?

            -  Improved agriculture, better lifestyles, brighter futures.

14. Describe Wave 6 of the e-Choupal. DO you think it is feasible?

            - A new vision of sourcing IT-enabled services from rural area has arised. Yes it is.

15. Can something similar to an e-Choupal be implemented in the Philippines?

            - Ofcourse. Because IT-implementation here in the Philippines is not a problem and others can be easily taught about how the processes can be done.