Presented by Sagarika Gandhi at the ICT4Ag International Conference, Kigali, Rwanda 4-8 November 2013

1. Delivering Livestock Knowledge to Indian Farmers
through mobile phones
Sagarika Gandhi
ICT4Ag International Conference, Kigali, Rwanda
4-8 November 2013

2. Key actors involved
Active Partners
 Service Provider (Lead partner)
- Handygo Technologies Pvt. Ltd (Handygo)
 Content Providers
- International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI)
- CABI (CAB International)
- Digital Green
Passive Partners
 Funding Partners
- GSMA Foundation
- USAID
- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

3. Purpose of the project
 Providing smallholder farmers with access to actionable,
relevant and timely information on livestock through mobile
phones
 Improving livestock productivity, decision making ability and
better incomes to the livestock keepers
 Empowering women by reducing information asymmetries due
to gender disparity

4. Target Beneficiaries
 Marginal farmers- less than 1 ha land holding
 Smallholder farmers- between 1-2 ha land holding
 Farmers practicing mixed cropping and livestock farms.

5. Approach Followed
Need
Assessment
Content &
Service
Design
Quality
Control
Awareness &
Promotion
Feedback &
Capacity
Building
Loyalty &
Satisfaction

6. Strategy for achieving results
 Location Specific focused content development
approach
 Quality check at various levels before sending to
Users
 Integrating mobile delivery channels (IVR, SMS,
Voice Message and Call Center)
 Pushing Dynamic information based on the profile.
 Regular User Testing, feedback analysis
 Focused outreach strategy

7. Role of mobile
 To provide scalable and affordable advisory services
to info-poor livestock keepers
 Accessibility- IVR & voice messages overcomes
literacy barriers
 Reduction of transaction costs of advisory services
 Improving farmer decision making ability
 Strengthening expert- farmer linkages

8. Delivery mechanism(s)
 Primary Information Pull Delivery
Agro advisories: Regional IVR allows user to easily navigate the mKisan
advisory capsules by selecting alpha- numeric keystrokes.
Farmer Helpline: A team of experts attend farmer queries on livestock. It is
much more efficient and cost effective than a conventional call center.
 Primary Information Push Delivery
Agro bulletins: Dynamic micro- information based on farmer profiles
delivered via SMS.
 Complementary R & D Information Pull Delivery
Videos: To be tested for users acceptance on mobile available on demand.

9. Outcomes
•
•
•
•
Total unique users are 24,081
Total content usage is 112,910 pulse
Total calls made by users is 73,566
Information on General care and management is
in high demand among users with total usage of
53,974 pulse. (48%)
• Cattle management advisories are more popular
followed by goats, buffalo and poultry.

10. Success Factors
•
•
•
•
Localized and quality content delivery
Service design- IVR & voice capsules
Access to low cost handset
Lower pricing and subscriptions available in
various denominations

11. Challenges
 Implementation effectiveness barriers
- Socio political and cultural diversity
- Infrastructure development difference
 Local agro knowledge providers and expert availability
 Content sourcing and validation
 Dynamic user base
 Frequent change of Mobile Numbers restricting to profile a
user

12. What next…..
 Gender focused content delivery
 Assessing loyalty and user satisfaction
 Impact assessment

13. Final Thoughts
 Provision of funds exclusively for content
 Long term projects are required to create real
impacts
 Potential of ICT is underutilized by farming
communities
 Localized and validated content- district and state
level