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.