This is the presentation I used during my Panel Discussion at the IWP 2014 (1st International Workshop on Inclusive Web Programming - Programming on the Web with Open Data for Societal Applications).This was part of ICSE 2014 (International Conference on Software Engineering'), Hyderabad.

1. Gramseva: Kisan
DEVELOPED BY NEIL MATHEW

2. Awards and Recognition
2ND PLACE
AGRICULTURE
#OpenDataApps Challenge
A National Competition
held by NASSCOM & NIC
Gramseva: Kisan was selected
from hundreds of applications
from 76 cities all over India.

3. Awards and Recognition
WINNER
DIGITAL GOVERNMENT
CATEGORY
Accenture-Yahoo
Innovation Jockeys 3
Hunt for India's Most Innovative
Minds Contest
Gramseva: Kisan was selected
from over 1300 entries with
contestants from across 400
colleges in India.

4. Key Features
1 Auto Sync with data.gov.in (Automated downloading of Price Information & Ease of
Use)
2 Local storage of data for Historical view (Prices not available today? Check
yesterday’s rate)
3 Synced data can be viewed Offline (Access prices without the Internet)
4 Graphical Visualization for trend analysis (Easy Indication of Rise & Fall of Prices)
5 Set Favorite Market/Commodity (Quick Access and Prioritization of Specific
Commodities)
6 Share price information with co-farmers by SMS, EMAIL, etc.
7 Free Alerts using Google Cloud Messaging to subscribed users
8 Information dissemination through AdMob banners

5. Screenshots
 Home
 Favorites
 All Commodities
 All Markets
 About

6. Find your Commodity
Market Price
 By Commodity Name
 By Market (Location)
Share Prices
via SMS, E-mail, Whatsapp,
etc
Screenshots

7.  Modal Price
 Max Price
 Min Price
Graphs represent
Rise or Fall
of prices.
Screenshots

8. Research & Feedback
 Visited a CSC in Kalchhina
and took feedback from the
villagers.
 They found it very useful:
 Knowing the official prices
help in bargaining during
buying & selling of
commodities with greedy
manipulative dealers
 Seeing visuals of rise or
fall of commodity prices
help decide when to
stock up or sell.

9. Challenges Faced
Only Daily Commodity Prices are available on
data.gov.in site. What if I want to check last week’s
prices?
 Prices are automatically downloaded (AutoSync) on a daily
basis. The mandi prices of previous days that are
downloaded by the app can be accessed at any time by the
user.

10. Challenges Faced
What if there isn’t Continued Internet Access?
 As soon as the device connects to the Internet, the App makes
an attempt to download the Mandi prices (AutoSync) and
stores it offline.
 Users can refer to previous day’s prices offline when internet
access is not available.

11. Challenges Faced
Won’t downloading daily price information overload
the phone memory?
 The Commodity Prices are stored for exactly one week at a
time. After one week, the prices before the current week will be
deleted. (First In, First Out)
 However, if a Commodity Market is selected as a Favorite, the
Price Information relating to it will be stored indefinitely capable
of holding values for many months.

12. Challenges Faced
Were there any problems graphing the price
information?
 Prices provided by data.gov.in are not always consistent. The
prices for a Commodity Market may be missing for many days
at irregular intervals. On many occasions, the prices may be
erratic like randomly having a value of Rs 0/quintal.
 The App uses many fail-safe algorithms to accurately graph
the values despite the many inconsistencies.

13. Challenges Faced
If the app was aimed at farmers, how do you expect
them to use this complex app?
 First of all, there are a number of modern farmers and wholesalers
with the means to purchase and use touch based feature phones.
 Second, those who lack the skills or monetary means to access it
themselves can have the information passed to them by easily
sharing the information via the SMS feature.
 Third, the plan is to integrate this service with CSCs (Common
Services Centre) so that the capable VLE (Village Level Entrepreneur)
in charge can pass the information to his community.

14. THE END.
 Any Questions?
 Check out the app
@ bit.ly/1bVdWh6