Iffco, Airtel Hand Power To The Villages

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NEW DELHI: Technology is going places. And guiding it to India’s far-flung villages is a joint venture between IFFCO and Airtel. On Friday, IFFCO subsidiary IFFCO Kisan Sanchar and Bharti Airtel form a joint venture for rural telephony, which will take gadgets and services to the countryside, where power is in short supply. Transistors, community radios, mobiles and torches which don’t rely on power — you name it, they got it.

The JV will use IFFCO’s co-operative network for marketing telephone services while Bharti will be the service provider. The early targets could be tech-wannabes in rural Uttar Pradesh, who are already familiar with some of these products, thanks to a pilot project conducted late last year. The services are available in several districts of Tamil Nadu as well. The JV, according to sources, is targeting 20% growth every year and expects some 150 million customers by 2011.

The JV will bring several hand-cranked products of common use. These include transistors, community radios and torches. There will also be lanterns with a battery life of three years. The wind-up transistors were invented in 1996 and are now used in several African nations. The hand-powered radio on offer will be a world-first. Some of the wind-up products are marketed worldwide by UK’s Freeplay.

For last year’s pilot projects, the mobile phones were partly sourced from Sinocell. The wide-screen BlackBerry-lookalike, which can access e-mail to commodity prices to agricultural inputs, was priced at around Rs 4,000. The small-screen version may cost around Rs 2,000.

Phones from Alcatel, Samsung and Phillips will also be sold at lower rates, but IFFCO could launch its own brand later. The power-free, wind-up charger will be a boon for the power-strapped rural user.

Around 3-7 minutes hand-cranking a day can charge the phones. The charger will come free with the mobile phones, which will sport SIM cards branded IFFCO-Airtel Green Card. A two-year warranty for handsets, after-sales service for farmers and wide rural connectivity after Airtel sets up enough towers are also on the cards.

NEW DELHI: Targeting 55 million farmers under the fold of IFFCO, telecom major Bharti Airtel today announced a joint venture with it, in which the fertiliser cooperative holds majority stake.

In the joint venture -- IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Ltd -- IFFCO will have the majority 50 per cent stake while Airtel and Star Global will have 25 per cent equity each, IKSL MD Rakesh Kapur said.

Airtel has already enrolled over 48,000 farmers under this scheme.

Airtel has created a value added platform to offer free daily voice updates on mandi prices, farming techniques, weather forecasts and fertiliser availability to the farmers, Bharti Group Chairman Sunil Mittal said here.

40 per cent of our customers now come from rural areas. By 2010, the rural population is likely to touch 800 million and two-third of those will be prospective mobile users, he said, adding the rural market is worth Rs 40,000 crore.

The value added platform 'Sanchar Hat' will be launched this month in Gujarat while next roll out would be in MP, Chhatisgarh and Maharashtra. At present, this is available in Punjab, Harayna, Rajasthan, UP, Tamil Nadu and Bihar, Kapur said, adding by the end of this fiscal, the scheme will cover the whole country.

Voice advices will be available in all local languages. The Indian farmer can look forward to the benefits of mobile telephony and internet.

Mittal said in the next two years, Bharti Airtel will be country's top rural telecom brand.

"We feel there is a great opportunity in telecom sector going to rural India to create new businesses for the cooperatives where farmers are the key stakeholders," IFFCO MD U S Awasthi said.