Srinivas Garudachar, Director Development Strategies, Grameen Intel Social Business Ltd

A Bottom-Up, Rural MicroEntrepreneur-led, ICT enabled Cross-sectoral

collaborative, sustainable & scalable social business

transforming lives and livelihoods of marginalised farmers

ANIS 2012: Seoul, Korea

eAGRICULTURE

ICT empowering the Next billions:

Agenda

• About Grameen-Intel Social Biz

• eAgro- small farmer community orientation

– Problems , Solutions, Sustainability & Impact

– Potential for Scaling & Partnering Locally

• Can this be of value to ANIS participants?

• Discussions on Collaborations for Replication

Grameen Intel Social Business Ltd. An Intel Capital Portfolio Company

• Funded by Intel Capital and Grameen Trust

• A BoP focused Social business with Impact, Sustainable approach & Scalability - prime considerations

• Developing analytical software with easy to use interface

• Biz model Social micro-entrepreneur focused, with community participation in business- key to sustainability

Vision: digital solutions for the world’s social problems

3

The Food Crisis

• Population growth: 75 million more people a year

• Production is not keeping up

• Food production costs & prices are climbing

• Small farmers desperate and opting out

• Food security under threat

Agriculture's ability to feed the world reaching its limit

4

Agriculture

• ~2.4B small farmers worldwide, eg. 700M in India…

– 75% of population in agro sector, feeding 100% of population

– But Agro contributes only 18% of the economy

– Farming becoming unviable for impoverished farmers

• Increasing focus on food output & marginalized farmers

– UN/ FAO, NGOs all working towards poverty alleviation in agriculture

• Huge Govt Programs (mostly subsidies for Rural Inclusion)

Need for a holistic, sustainable approach to

improve farmer livelihoods & food security 5

What are his various stumbling blocks?

– Fragmented and subsistence existence (large in total no, but individually powerless)

– Illiterate & poor with little access to mainstream services- many unmet needs! Low Productivity.

– No understanding of his main asset-Land: quality, nutrient status, capacity to grow right crop & market

– Poor quality supplies: eg. seed & nutrients

– No Access to best agro cultivation practices and capital

– Huge Risks- no mitigation instruments: finance, pests, diseases, climate

– Labour shortage vs. unviable mechanization

– Little Access to market info / transaction systems that are transparent and fair

– No proper Post harvest logistics of Storage, Processing & Transport

The Small Farmer Community Situation

FARMER ENTREPRENEUR

Farmer discusses

problems, needs, land

status, income &

expense details with the

Entrepreneur

Genuine Seed Supplier

Genuine Fertilizer Supplier

Genuine Pesticide Supplier

Agriculture Advisors

Micro Financer (Credit, Ins.)

Markets

Machinery

eAgro

routes

request

to

relevant

group

FARMER

What is the solution?

Entrepreneur

enters farm data

into eAgro system

eAgro : Creating an integrated IT enabled Agro ecosystem (hitherto untouched by tech)

Tailoring for local entrepreneur led growth and development

Software Modules For Agriculture Lifecycle

15 Modules on our roadmap solving farmer issues

8

eAgro solution

Example Usage Model

An eAgro entrepreneur uses software for soil analysis and

recommend the key missing nutrients necessary to increase

production for a fee of US $ 3

9

Participatory ICT enabled Entrepreneurship

Driven

The Uniqueness of eAgro PIE Approach … key to Sustainability

Rural Entrepreneur Interface between Agro ecosystem & Farmers

IT bringing the Agro ecosystem to the

doorstep

Community

Buy-in,

Cross Sectoral Value-Value

exchange

Key to business is creating continual social impact: building and sustaining trust of the community =>

key to lateral growth and expansion to other areas.

For-Profit (not profit maximizing, but balanced with social impact):

Revenues for entrepreneur from Agro services

Transaction fees, Registrations, Advisories

Commissions earned from purchase/sales/credit

Advertising

Vocational Education

Certifications (Organic, EuroGAP…)

Microventure profits

Revenues streams leveraging the community connect (ancillary initiatives …farm machinery leasing,

microfinance, primary healthcare, vocational education, power..)

Unleashing the social entrepreneurship to enable rural inclusion at the BoP

Business Model

Innovative Use of ICT:

– Cost-effectively bridge distance, connect disparate islands and enables scaling and replication,

– Brings business transparency to the system

– Good aggregation tool for the farmer to leverage for collective bargaining at both supply and market ends,

• Aggregation provides opportunity to unearth new bizs (eg. labour shortage > mechanization)

– Individualized farmer portfolio-management approach enables planning, risk mitigation & improved productivity

• .

Social interventions that address Long-term Sustainability: – Creation of Social micro-entrepreneurship engines

– Community Participation: Organizing farmers into logical groups

The eAgro services business plugs the gaps and inefficiency of existing siloed systems

(suppliers, extension programs, markets..) without adding any great burden or overheads.

eAgro adds value to each of the remote stakeholder silos (suppliers, markets, experts, extn centres, financers)

Ensures each one of them to be more operationally customer centric (ie small farmer focused), productive, profitable and scalable.

Salient features of eAgro

105% increase in Seed Cost due to guaranteed quality seed at higher

price resulting in better germination rate and better yield

17% reduction in Fertilizer Cost due to the advantage of lower

eKutir bulk rate with the benefit passed onto farmer

71% reduction in Labour Cost due to minimal labour used

mainly for general upkeep, not for pests/diseases (better

disease and pest resistant seeds and appropriate use of

fertilizer and pesticides in right quantity)

29% reduction in Pesticide Cost due to minimal

expense towards pesticides

Advice on changed crop pattern & best seed type;

type of fertilizer, the amount and procedure of

application, and general advice on crop maintenance

Informed Farmer increased his costs by 41%

Production increased by 15%

Sales increased by 122%

Net Cash Flow increased by 203%!!

Financial Impact: Farmer

Impact of cross sectoral participation focused on the

farmer community

Entrepreneur Energized

Impact on Village Social Entrepreneur

Earning > 3x (1st year alone)

Leadership & respect

Breaking even in ~ 7mos

Interest from new entrepreneurs

Strong pipeline

Trained apprentices

Engines for growth

Selected & Trained

Improved:

-Biz Skills

-ICT literacy

-Customer relations

Impact: Farmer Community

• Farmer Community energized Localized Entrepreneurial capacity, livelihood & employment generated with

savings augmented…

Potential for more income streams and new jobs

• Community bond: Sharing & solving the problems thro Farmer Groups- owning it up

• Money in the pocket for other unmet needs

• Quality of life outlook better Migration arrested > related social disaster averted

Agriculture stakeholders • Suppliers: Seeds, fertilizers- direct transparent access to larger

customer base, better market penetration & delivery mechanism for other support services

• Financial Services: ability to understand farmer need, access risk, and serve them in a timely, costeffective manner

• Agriculture Univ & extension: ability to access & address farmer problems, leveraging remote resources

• Market Aggregators: ability to forecast and source produce in bulk, directly and cost-effectively

• Mechanization: able to aggregate demand=> Good proposition for leasing machinery biz

Win-Win for all players to serve the Farmer thro eAgro

Play Grameen-Intel India eAgro Initiative Impact Video

Replicating in your region? Interested?

What Grameen-Intel, Intel and partners bring:

•Good opportunity to build, demo & showcase how IT can help enable achieve MDGs

•Implementation Experience & Methodologies (social engineering- groups, sustainable

businesses, social entrepreneurship)

•ICT4D Solutions

•Global Brand & reach

•ICT4D tech biz Incubation capability

•Can collaborate globally to build required visibility to help scale the fruits of ICT4D impact

•Orientation towards community livelihood augmentation enabling increased customer footfalls

•Opportunities for other verticals of Telecenter Biz: eHealth, Education, Trade, Finance etc

Key Messages

• Big problems that still need to get solved • Linking technology to macro level issues • Nimble, tangible BoP solution development • Good opportunity to bring together key stakeholders (from

different sectors) across the world to solve the issue

So how can we all collaborate to accelerate/ resolve these problems?

19

THANK YOU

For more info, contact:

SrinivasBGarudachar@gmail.com

www.GrameenIntel.com

www.eKutir.net

Backup

eAgro solution

Example Usage Model

An eAgro entrepreneur uses software for soil analysis and

recommend the key missing nutrients necessary to increase

production for a fee of US $ 3

22

eAgro initiative – A Pictorial View

THANK YOU

SrinivasBGarudachar@gmail.com