How Ranjan Sharma showed telecom companies a new way to grab the rural mart

“If we were an...” Ranjan Sharma’s voice tapers off into incoherence on the phone.

“Sorry, I can’t hear you,” I hastily add. Not in vain as I shall immediately discover.

“IF WE WERE AN NGO, WE WOULDN’T BE MAKING ANY MONEY,”

Sharma ups the decibels, trying to outdo the poor connectivity. He’s may be on the move. I don’t ask him, though.

In what is a wicked irony, our chat concerns the power of mobile telephony in bettering Indian farmers’ work and, as a result, their lives.

Iffco Kisan Sanchar Ltd (IKSL), the firm he co-founded in the capital with the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Ltd (Iffco) in 2007, was one of India’s 10 best agri-innovations brought to the attention of US president Barack Obama during his visit here in November.

IKSL has in almost all parts of the country, a customer base of 80 lakh farmers, to whom it sends five free voice messages everyday on crops, weather, livestock and the like. It also extends to them a free helpline service on the same.

“Most of our customers are Iffco shareholders,” says Sharma.
Of India’s farmer population of 15 crore, around 5.5 crore are in Iffco. Sharma’s Star Global Resources and Iffco put in `2.5 crore each in 2007 to found IKSL.

“I gave a premium to Iffco because of its wide network,” notes Sharma.

He kept just a little over one-fourth of the stake, while the rest was with Iffco. Sharma had in the previous year done all the groundwork for IKSL.

He did a 45-day pilot in 11 villages of the Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh, where he distributed handsets free of cost. “I looked at the information needs of the customers, which included alerts on crop diseases, unseasonal rain, time of power cuts and when the canal will be opened,” says Sharma, a cost accountant and law graduate who had for over 20 years worked with DCM Shriram Industries and Oswal Chemicals & Fertilisers. “I noticed that last-mile dissemination was not happening.”

The idea excited several telcos because it could help them gain entry into the under-penetrated rural market. “At that point, the penetration was 1.4%, now it has crossed 20%,” says Sharma.
Bharti Airtel came on-board by getting into an agreement with Iffco to buy a 24% stake from Iffco in five tranches. Currently, it holds 5%. Airtel is the exclusive service provider for IKSL. “For now, it will remain that way, but I don’t rule out getting other telcos in the future,” says Sharma.

IKSL, whose SIM cards are priced on a par with regular ones, makes money by being paid by Airtel for each new customer and the talk time of the users.

Talking of the lessons learnt from IKSL’s operations so far, Sharma says it has realised messages should be very topical.
A farmer can choose to get voice messages only on, say, paddy and wheat, and cattle. But the messages are not restricted to farming and animal husbandry: “We also send a message a week on employment, but our main focus will be agriculture.”

A survey of nearly 1,600 farmers who are also IKSL members showed that they reported a 21% rise in yield.

Ganesh Bhadak, a farmer from the Palasi village from near Aurangabad, is happy to have subscribed to IKSL’s service. “I got the card a year back and it’s very convenient as I get all the information I need in one place. All the farmers I know have started using this too,” he says.

IKSL is not the only one operating in the area of agricultural advisory in the country. Reuters Market Light, Tata Consultancy Services’ mKrishi and Qualcomm’s venture for fisherfolk in Tamil Nadu in association with M S Swaminathan Research Foundation and Tata Teleservices, called Fisher Friend, are some of them. The advantage IKSL has over them is its reach, thanks to Iffco.
Recognition has been in no short supply for IKSL.

Last year, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave it half-a-million dollars for a project involving farmers in Orissa, West Bengal and Jharkhand.

“We don’t need any money, we are doing well. We were even approached by advertisers. They were willing to pay Rs 4-5 per message per customer. But we have credibility among farmers and we don’t want to lose that,” says Sharma with a measured, soft-spoken confidence. Though he does not want IKSL’s revenue and profit details published for reasons of confidentiality, it can safely be said they are not insignificant.

Sharma says he’s no longer involved in the day-to-day running of IKSL, which is managed professionally. Curious if he’s moved on to another interesting venture, I enquire.  “I am working with the National Rural Health Mission on health messages. We are doing a pilot in Rajasthan. It’s still in the early stages that’s why I didn’t mention it earlier,” he says.