1. ANIS 2012: Seoul, Korea
eAGRICULTURE
ICT empowering the Next billions:
A Bottom-Up, Rural MicroEntrepreneur-led, ICT enabled Cross-sectoral
collaborative, sustainable & scalable social business
transforming lives and livelihoods of marginalised farmers
Srinivas Garudachar, Director Development Strategies, Grameen Intel Social Business Ltd

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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
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6. The Small Farmer Community Situation
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

7. What is the solution?
FARMER ENTREPRENEUR
Farmer discusses
problems, needs, land
status, income &
expense details with the
Entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
Genuine Seed Supplier enters farm data
FARMER into eAgro system
Genuine Fertilizer Supplier
eAgro
Genuine Pesticide Supplier routes
request
Agriculture Advisors to
Micro Financer (Credit, Ins.) relevant
group
Markets
Machinery
eAgro : Creating an integrated IT enabled Agro ecosystem (hitherto untouched by tech)
Tailoring for local entrepreneur led growth and development

8. Software Modules For Agriculture
Lifecycle
15 Modules on our roadmap solving farmer issues
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9. 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

10. The Uniqueness of eAgro
PIE Approach … key to Sustainability
Participatory ICT enabled Entrepreneurship
Driven
Community
Buy-in, IT bringing the Agro Rural Entrepreneur
ecosystem to the Interface between Agro
Cross Sectoral doorstep
Value-Value ecosystem & Farmers
exchange

11. Business Model
 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

12. Salient features of eAgro
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.

13. Financial Impact: Farmer
Production increased by 15%
105% increase in Seed Cost due to guaranteed quality seed at higher
Sales increased by 122%
price resulting in better germination rate and better yield
Net Cash Flow increased by 203%!!
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%
Impact of cross sectoral participation focused on the
farmer community

14. Impact on Village Social Entrepreneur
Entrepreneur Energized
Earning > 3x (1st year alone)
Leadership & respect
Selected & Trained Breaking even in ~ 7mos
Improved:
-Biz Skills Interest from new
-ICT literacy entrepreneurs
-Customer relations Strong pipeline
Trained apprentices
Engines for growth

15. 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

16. 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

17. Play Grameen-Intel India eAgro Initiative Impact Video

18. 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

19. 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?
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20. THANK YOU
For more info, contact:
SrinivasBGarudachar@gmail.com
www.GrameenIntel.com
www.eKutir.net

21. Backup

22. 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
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23. eAgro initiative – A Pictorial View

38. THANK YOU
SrinivasBGarudachar@gmail.com