E-CHOUPAL – One-Stop Agriculture Kiosk

E-CHOUPAL – One-Stop Agriculture Kiosk

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Get all my farming information from one place to buy seeds, fertilizers or equipment, and get the best price for my harvest

WHO NEEDS IT?

Indian farmers who cannot compete effectively while in the dark on crop prices, weather forecasts, and best farming practices.

Buyers such as ITC Limited, an Indian conglomerate with an agri-business unit, who want to purchase produce directly from farmers, without the added cost of middlemen.

WHAT IS THE CONNECTIVATION?

e-Choupal is an initiative of ITC that enables farmers to negotiate prices with ITC, order inputs such as fertilizer and seeds, and buy/sell at physical hubs.

Internet kiosks are set up in villages empowering and uniting Indian farmers to access real-time crop prices and weather forecasts, enabling them to quickly know the best time and place to sell their crops, creating a fair market.

WHAT WAS THERE BEFORE?

Before e-Choupal, India’s farmers had to sell their produce in local mandi (government mandated markets) where they often dealt with exploitive middlemen.

Lack of fair compensation for high-quality goods crushed farmers’ motivation to invest in and produce superior crops.

IMPACT

Approximately 6,500 Internet kiosks have reached 4 million of India’s farmers located in 40,000 villages across 10 states. E-farmers are seeing higher profitability as a result of lower transaction costs and fair compensation for higher quality produce; ITC is benefiting from lower costs and higher quality produce. By 2012, ITC plans to expand to 20,000 kiosks reaching 15 million Indian farmers in 100,000 villages.

COMPANY “AHA”

Timely information to my suppliers can streamline the value chain and lead to better quality and prices that benefit buyer and seller.

EMERGING TRENDS

• Access to Information: The increasing availability of Internet access in remote places puts Indian farmers in touch with critical information for the first time in their lives.

• Globalization: Increasing access to real-time data is becoming increasingly important to global competitiveness and a necessity for Indian farmers to get the best prices for their crops.

BASIC HUMAN NEEDS

• Fairness: Indian farmers can only compete successfully in a trading system that is just and whose rules are simple and clear.

• Recognition: Indian farmers are motivated to produce the highest quality goods possible when they see their hard work will be properly acknowledged and rewarded.

WHY THEY ARE WINNING

• ITC kiosks connect over 4 million Indian farmers with information they need to prosper, and reinforce India’s long-established culture of village communication hubs and self-help groups, earning ITC the trust of these farmers.

PRICING

• Market Makers: ITC created an online market directly between itself and India’s farmers.

• Pre-Sales:Transactions are negotiated online, leaving only the actual exchange at physical hubs.

• Fee-for-Service: Farmers operating the Internet kiosks earn service fees for sales.

PRODUCTION

• Internet kiosks with access to real-time pricing and weather information, as well as best practices based on ITC’s 90 years of farming experience.

• Physical trading hubs in close proximity to farmers.

OFFERING

Transparent clearing house for selling crops.

Opportunity for ITC to buy directly from farmers instead of paying more to go through middlemen.

DELIVERY

Farmers access information at Internet kiosks where they can negotiate sales with ITC.

At its physical hubs, ITC buys farmers’ goods and sells them inputs.

MARKET

Rural India’s farmers in need of price, weather, best practices, and quality inputs in order to be competitive.

ITC as a direct buyer of farmers’ goods and seller of inputs.

PARTNERS

• India’s government is a strong backer of e-Choupal.

• ITC selects farmers to be in charge of its kiosks to ensure that fellow farmers understand how to use the kiosk effectively.

Amazon vs Flipkart vs Snapdeal

In the 90s we saw the dot com boom; do we perceive the e-commerce sector growth in India with the same hype? Well, it’s booming for sure but what happens next is yet to be seen. The intense competition in this space, especially among the top 3 players is good for the consumers. Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal, all of them have raised investments or have commitments of $1 Billion or more. All 3 work on a marketplace model but have some areas where they excel or differ from one another as to be able to grow rapidly in a short span of time is the real aim. Flipkart follows an invite-only model to sign on sellers which is more time-consuming. Note that Amazon doesn't sell, but it is a glorified marketplace, for now; competing with Ebay in that space; whilst Flipkart has also launched a similar service. Not to forget other promising entities like Yebhi, Quickr which are also making a shout-in in other categories. In the classifieds sector the Indian based Quickr is facing stiff competition from the OLX.

When and who will come out as the outright winner and why? Compare the data below.

Source:Trak.in Initially, before Amazon entered the Indian market, the industry had several players Flipkart, Myntra, Snapdeal, Let's Buy, India Times Shopping, Fashion and You and others. With huge funding coming from foreign investors like Softbank to huge VCs betting on them, the big fish, the piranhas started consolidating and eating up (acquiring) smaller players like Let's Buy, Urban Touch etc.

Present scenario in Amazon vs Flipkart vs Snapdeal

Market share of these sharks has increased considerably. The three major Players are Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal. We can’t envisage any new player emerging from the mirage.
The sharks have now become bigger for the ocean as Flipkart acquired Myntra. Money is being poured in at an alarming rate. As Flipkart announced a $1 billion financing, Amazon decided to steal Filpkart's thunder by announcing that it would invest $2 billion in its Indian entity. Tapping the maximum possible market is the key & obviously demographics are a factor.
The final Scenario Only 2 major players left. Flipkart and Amazon have to survive this. Snapdeal has an outside shot. Flipkart will go for an IPO in either US or Singapore . E-commerce will eventually drive towards profitability though, the smaller sharks will be eaten up by the bigger ones, either via acquisitions - or we'd see plenty of mid-size sharks forming alliances.
The online commerce market in India has a very low penetration. We haven't even begun to scorch the surface here in terms of potential. India does something around $3 billion a year in Commerce; whilst China does something around $100+ billion major due to the Jack Ma led Alibaba which recently got listed on NYSE

As of today, the biggest player in this market is Flipkart, followed by the rest. Amazon has covered a good percentage of market in a short time, but the race has just started & Flipkart’s already some paces ahead, for now. Flipkart's investors knew that the real e-commerce battle in India was not Flipkart versus Infibeam or Snapdeal. They knew even before the launch of Amazon.in that the real contender was Amazon.
Amazon India’s sales are estimated at over $200 million (Rs 1,200 crore). It took flipkart 7 years to achieve the sales numbers, snapdeal expects to reach it this year while amazon might clock Rs 6,000 crore by the end of March 2016.

Face-off
India's biggies, Wipro's Azim Premji and Infosys' N R Narayana Murthy, have placed their bets on the burgeoning $3-billion e-commerce market space too. Azim Premji has sided with Myntra (acquired by flipkart) & Snapdeal while Narayana Murthy has placed his faith on Amazon.

There's not going to be one clear winner considering the funds these firms are pooling in. Over the next few years, each of these companies will find a niche that they'd dominate, and go for aggressive expansion. And India is a huge market, and whosoever scales faster the better. It has become a three-headed race. But everyone is just as well equipped to scale as fast as anyone; so then it will all boil down to branding, and management. The fight is not just about logistics but also about penetration, eventually though all boils down to the revenue.

The market is too big, and a large amount of population is yet to put internet to productive use; we can see the internet of things put to work to a huge-ass market like India. However, the concept of IOT is yet not established as compared to the developed markets. In the next 5 years, the landscape will completely change. Flipkart and Snapdeal will diversify in other sectors and will no longer be just an e-commerce site. Just how Amazon has invested in Kindle, cloud services etc. Flipkart had started a payment called Payzippy; though it didn't work out for them. They are trying to expand across various channels that'll add to their revenue.
Conclusion:
The Indian online customer is typically aloof, and seeks the cheapest possible product across all platforms. The online marketplace becomes a hunting ground for the best deals, with multinational behemoths and Indian ecommerce giants fighting offering huge discounts to lure customers. Well, all the aggressive pricing and discounts are being paid by Venture Capitalists’ pockets. This has given rise to sites/platforms MySmartPrice / Price baba et al.
The intensity of competition has heightened & it’s really hard to predict who gets the top slot. And the fight for the zenith in the $3.1 billion Indian ecommerce industry has evolved into a three-headed affair. Firstly, Amazon Inc (Market Cap: $143 billion), which entered India last but has seen enormous growth considering the time-frame. DST Global backed Flipkart, with its recent funding of $210 million from the Russian firm, has now received nearly $780 million in funds in total. We all know that Flipkart recently paid $300-330 million to acquire the fashion e-store Myntra to gain a foothold in the fashion space. And lastly, Snapdeal, which raised $100 million via Temasek Holdings, BlackRock Inc and PremjiInvest . It had earlier pooled $134 million from eBay Inc and et al.

Save tree Save life On EARTH

Deforestation, clearance or clearing is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a non-forest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use.

The term deforestation is often misused to describe any activity where all trees in an area are removed. However in temperate climates, the removal of all trees in an area.—in conformance with sustainable forestry practices—is correctly described as regeneration harvest.In temperate mesic climates, natural regeneration of forest stands often will not occur in the absence of disturbance, whether natural or anthropogenic. Furthermore, biodiversity after regeneration harvest often mimics that found after natural disturbance, including biodiversity loss after naturally occurring rainforest destruction.

Deforestation occurs for many reasons: trees are cut down to be used or sold as fuel (sometimes in the form of charcoal) or timber, while cleared land is used as pasture for livestock, plantations of commodities and settlements. The removal of trees without sufficient reforestation has resulted in damage to habitat, biodiversity loss and aridity. It has adverse impacts onbiosequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Deforestation has also been used in war to deprive the enemy of cover for its forces and also vital resources. Modern examples of this were the use of Agent Orange by the British military in Malaya during the Malayan Emergency and the United States military in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Among countries with a per capita GDP of at least US$4,600, net deforestation rates have ceased to increase.Deforested regions typically incur significant adverse soil erosion and frequently degrade into wasteland.

Disregard or ignorance of intrinsic value, lack of ascribed value, lax forest management and deficient environmental laws are some of the factors that allow deforestation to occur on a large scale. In many countries, deforestation, both naturally occurring and human induced, is an ongoing issue. Deforestation causes extinction, changes to climatic conditions, desertification, and displacement of populations as observed by current conditions and in the past through the fossil record. More than half of all plant and land animal species in the world live in tropical forests.

Trade in Human(HUMAN TRAFFICKING):MUST END

Human trafficking is the third largest organized crime after drugs and the arms trade across the globe (need a detailed introduction?

. According to the definition of the United Nations – “trafficking is any activity leading to recruitment, transportation, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or a position of vulnerability”.  Close to 80% of the human trafficking across the world is done for sexual exploitation and the rest is for bonded labor and India is considered as the hub of this crime in Asia. As per the statistics of the government – in every eight minutes a child goes missing in our country. In 2011 about 35,000 children were reported missing and more than 11,000 out of these were from West Bengal. Further, it is assumed that only 30% of the total cases are reported, so the actual number is pretty high.

Human trafficking is one of the major problems in India. Till date no concrete study has been conducted so far to know the exact number of trafficked kids in India. The New York Times has reported on the widespread problem of human trafficking in India especially in the state of Jharkhand. Also in the report it is stated that young girls are trafficked from neighboring Nepal to India. In another article published in The Times of India – Karnataka is the third state in India for human trafficking. Other South Indian states are also the most sought after destinations for human trafficking. Every year more than 300 such cases are reported in each of the four south Indian states. Whereas West Bengal and Bihar, on an average have 100 such cases each year. As per the data, more than half of the human trafficking cases are from these states. According to the latest report on human trafficking by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reveals that Tamil Nadu has 528 such cases of human trafficking in 2012. The number is really high and more than any other state except for West Bengal (549). As per the data from Home Ministry, 1379 cases of human trafficking were reported from Karnataka in the period of four years, in Tamil Nadu the number is 2,244 whereas Andhra Pradesh has 2,157 cases of human trafficking. Recently 300 bonded labourers in Bangalore have been rescued. According to an article in Firstpost, Delhi is the hub of human trafficking trade in India and half of the world’s slaves live in India. Delhi is the hotspot for illegal trade of young girls for domestic labour, forced marriage and prostitution. Delhi is also the transit point for human trafficking.

Kids especially girl and young women, mostly from Northeast are taken from their homes and sold in faraway states of India for sexual exploitation and to work as bonded labour by the agents who lure their parents with education, better life, and money for these kids . Agents do not send these kids to school but sell them to work in brick kilns, carpentry units, as domestic servants, beggars etc. Whereas girls are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Even these girls are forced to marry in certain regions where female to male sex ratio is highly disturbed. Children from tribal areas are at greater risk of human trafficking. Recently there were cases of human trafficking in which most of the children were from the Kuki tribe in Manipur’s Tamenglong district. Reason for this was the tribal clashes that let the human trafficking to prosper. Conflict between the Kukis and Nagas tribe in Northeast region between 1992 and 1997 left many kids homeless. These kids were taken by agents to the other parts of the country.

Excuse me Girl are you safe in your HOME?

Rape in India has been described as one of India's
most common crimes against
women and by the UN ’s
human-rights chief as a "NATIONAL PROBLEM".
New Delhi has the highest number of rape-reports among Indian cities.
India have doubled between 1990 and 2008. According to the
National Crime Records Bureau , in 2012, 25,000 rape cases were
reported across India. Out of these, 24,470 were committed by
relative or neighbor. Men accounted to commit 98 per cent
of reported rapes. The latest estimates suggest that a new case
of rape is reported every 22 minutes in India.

many cases are not even in records and i will talk about them.
a very close friend of mine he told me about his servent's story who has three daughters.
his elder daughter was kidnaped and raped by few localites.
when i asked them to report police complaint they replied that police is not for our security just because they are poor.

another story is of child exploitation by her grandfather in P3 greater noida(u.p).
her grandfather use to gave her choclates and play with her body.
the girl was just eight years old when an NGO intracted with that girl then this thing came into picture but still there is no action.
i am asking to the government that why a eight year old girl is not safe in india.
remedies for such things is there should be education for good touch and bad touch
i am not accusing government the fault is in society and the mind set of people.
a rapist is also from our society and in our society girls has been treated as an object so there mind is set that women are weak  and can not fight back.
#fightbackindia
#standforyoursafety
#Raiseyourvoice
#Girlsarenotobject.

The Untold story

Some stories do not have start point or end point it just begins from anywhere.
This is my second post Hope you have liked the previous one
i am basically from a town where a particular set of culture is built.
People who thinks beyond that culture is treated like a traitor.
yes ,i am talking about superstitions and black magic which is banned by SUPREME COURT of india.
but it is still in practise.
i am witness of such practise in which people were brutaly sluaghtered just for the sake of god.
many 'PAKHANDI BABA'S making this thing to earn money and fool people.
Black magic has traditionally referred to the use of supernatural
powers or magic for evil and selfish purposes.With respect
to the left-hand path and right- hand path dichotomy, black magic
is the malicious counterpart of benevolent white magic. In
modern times, some find that the definition of "black magic" has
been convoluted by people who define magic or ritualistic
practices that they disapprove of as "black magic". 
i am not going to use the actual names in this account
for the need of privacy by the related individuals.
in the interiors of town hata, (U.P)there lived a couple with three
daughters. They always wanted a son,but were always gifted with a
daughter.Even after months of prayers and invocation they were unable to
produce a son. Tired and dissappointed with their faith they
turned towards the help of a self- claimed deity- a local baba, who
assured them of a way out. He told them to sacrifice one of their own
daughter and then the almighty will gift their deed with a son. So lost in
the mirage of getting a son, they didn't think twice before sacrificing
their own blood for the hope of getting the greater gender. The day
they sacrificed their daughter and slaughter her in a far-away
temple,local news broke out that a baba has been arrested for
misleading people into black faith. They rushed to the sight to find out
that it was the same baba. The self proclaimed deity.
stop believing Blindly INDIA.

A boy at gas station

India is a country where adam smith's theory of Ecnomics Proved Wrong at some points because People Who are rich gets richer and the people who are poor gets poorer.
i am writing about a boy who do not go to school and works at a gas station.
it was my first time when i stood for some social cause
i went to taught some poor childs who can't afford for their education .
SALMAN was the name of boy who runs a small gas station
to earn some money for food and shelter
when i came to know that a Eight year old child is labouring for his family
i was extremly shocked and ashamed.
My level of shock increased when i found the passion of learing or grasping things so fast in him.
i asked the whole class that which subject you people found more intresting?
the answer was ENGLISH&MATHS that was really a great answer and choice too.
but the sad part is i can only teach them few things.
They really want to go school
and to be a part of change in INDIA.