A presentation which needs a glance.

2. e-Choupal concept
e-Choupal is a hindi word which means “village gathering
place”. e-Choupal is a virtual market place where farmers can
transact directly with a processor and can realise better price
for their product.

3. ORIGINATION
 e-Choupal is an initiative of ITC Limited, launched in JUNE 2000 by Y C Deveshwar,
Chairman, ITC
 ITC Limited (formerly India Tobacco Company Limited) is a consumer product and
agribusiness conglomerate in India, known for their production of cigarettes, food products
and packaging services
 Through the e-Choupal initiative, ITC has created more than 6,500 e-Choupal computer
stations in rural areas that serve an average of six hundred farmers each.
 The purpose is to inform and empower them and, as a result, to improve the quality of
agricultural goods and the quality of life for farmers and the concept of middleman was
demolished in this case.

4. How it works?
The farmer carries a sample to local kiosk
and receives some price quotations from
the sanchalak. If the farmer like the quote,
then he can transport the produce directly
to an ITC collection center and gets
payment within two hours of the delivery.
FARMERS
SANCHALAK
SAMYOJAK
ITC FACTORY
PC &
INTERNET

5. Who is Sanchalak?
A Sanchalak is a literate person in a village who is elected amongst the village
population.
He acts as a mediator and retrieve the information acting as a representative of
ITC to the village people.
Who is Samyojak?
A Samyojak is a person who coordinates a group of villagers, performs
documentation work, supplies farm inputs from ITC and partner companies
to sanchalaks, thus acts as a logistical support.

6. CHALLENGES
 The e-choupal system faces multiple continuing challenges. One of the major
challenge was BPA i.e. Business process automation which the farmers resist to
accept.
 As the number and power of sanchalaks increased, the threat of origination of
monopoly market increases which leads to fixed price concept in every e-choupals.
 The speed of expansion of e-choupals was one of the major threat too in terms of
execution management.

7. Competitors
HUL’s Shakti Project
 Godrej Aadhar - Godrej
 Tata Kisan Sansar – TATA Chemicals
 Mahindra Subh Labh – M&M

8. Awards
ITC's e-Choupal has won numerous awards:
 United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) Award at the
international conference on Sharing Innovative Agribusiness Solutions 2008 at Cairo
for ITC's exemplary initiatives in agri business through the e-Choupal.
 The Ashoka - Changemakers 'Health For All' Award 2006 for the Rural Health Services
model for delivery of health services through the e-Choupals.
 The Stockholm Challenge 2006. This award is for using information technology for the
economic development of rural communities.

9. “Before ITC introduced us to e-Choupal, we were restricted to selling our produce
in the local mandi. We had to go through middlemen and prices were low. ITC
trained me to manage the Internet kiosk and I became the e-Choupal Sanchalak in
my village. Today we are a community of e-farmers with access to daily prices of a
variety of crops in India and abroad - this helps us to get the best price. We can
also find out about many other important things - weather forecasts, the latest
farming techniques, crop insurance, etc. e-Choupal has not only changed the
quality of our lives, but our entire outlook.”
Success Story
ABHISHEK JAIN Soya Farmer,
& e-Choupal
Sanchalak Dahod Village,
Raisen District Madhya Pradesh

10. THANK
YOU
AYUSHI JAIN
KUSUM PRAJAPAT