ITC e-Choupal
e-Choupal is an initiative of ITC Limited, a conglomerate in India, to link directly with rural farmers via the Internet for procurement of agricultural and aquaculture products like soybeans, wheat, coffee, and prawns. e-Choupal tackles the challenges posed by Indian agriculture, characterized by fragmented farms, weak infrastructure and the involvement of intermediaries. The programme installs computers with Internet access in rural areas of India to offer farmers up-to-date marketing and agricultural information.
Effects of e-Choupal
ITC Limited has provided computers and Internet access in rural areas across several agricultural regions of the country, where the farmers can directly negotiate the sale of their produce with ITC Limited. Online access enables farmers to obtain information on mandi prices, and good farming practices, and to place orders for agricultural inputs like seeds and fertilizers. This helps farmers improve the quality of their products, and helps in obtaining a better price.
Each ITC Limited kiosk with Internet access is run by a sanchalak — a trained farmer. The computer is housed in the sanchalak's house and is linked to the Internet via phone lines or by a VSAT connection. Each installation serves an average of 600 farmers in the surrounding ten villages within about a 5 km radius. The sanchalak bears some operating cost but in return earns a service fee for the e-transactions done through his e-Choupal. The warehouse hub is managed by the same traditional middle-men, now called samyojaks, but with no exploitative power due to the reorganisation. These middlemen make up for the lack of infrastructure and fulfill critical jobs like cash disbursement, quantity aggregation and transportation.
Since the introduction of e-Choupal services, farmers have seen a rise in their income levels because of a rise in yields, improvement in quality of output, and a fall in transaction costs. Even small farmers have gained from the initiative. Farmers can get real-time information despite their physical distance from the mandis. The system saves procurement costs for ITC Limited. The farmers do not pay for the information and knowledge they get from e-Choupals; the principle is to inform, empower and compete. e-market place for spot transactions and support services to futures exchange
There are 6,500 e-Choupals in operation in 40,000 villages in 10 states, affecting around 4 million farmers. ITC plans to scale up to 20,000 e-Choupals by 2012 covering 100,000 villages in 15 states, servicing 15 million farmers.
Amul
Amul is an Indian dairy cooperative, based at Anand in the state of Gujarat, India.
Formed in 1950, it is a brand managed by a cooperative body, the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF), which today is jointly owned by 3.6 million milk producers in Gujarat.
The white revolution was spearheaded by Tribhuvandas Patel under the guidance of Sardar Patel. As a result, Kaira District Milk Union Limited was born in 1946. Tribhuvan das became the founding chairman of the organization which he led till his last day of his life. He hired Dr. Kurien three years after the white revolution. He convinced Dr.Kurien to stay and help with the mission rest was history in the dairying industry.
Amul spurred India's White Revolution, which made the country the world's largest producer of milk and milk products. In the process Amul became the largest food brand in India and has ventured into markets overseas.
Dr Verghese Kurien, founder-chairman of the GCMMF for more than 30 years (1973–2006), is credited with the success of Amul. Amul products are now available in more than 60 countries in the world.
The GCMMF is the largest food products marketing organisation of India. It is the apex organisation of the dairy cooperatives of Gujarat. It is the exclusive marketing organisation for products under the brand name of Amul and Sagar. Over the last five and a half decades, dairy cooperatives in Gujarat have created an economic network that links more than 3.1 million village milk products with millions of consumers in India. Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd.
V H Group (Venky’s)
The V H Group is an Indian company with interests in poultry, processed food, animal vaccines and pharmaceuticals.
The V H Group has its headquarters in Pune, and has offices in London, Morocco, Switzerland, Syria, South Africa, Brazil, Moscow, UAE, Singapore, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia and The Philippines. The Group has production plants in India, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Switzerland, and exports to 42 countries across the world.
The V H Group is today owned and controlled by the family of B. V. Rao, who founded the company in 1970, along with couple of his friends, Jagapati Rao Chitturi being one of them. His daughter, Anuradha Desai, serves as chairperson whilst his sons, Balaji and Venkatesh Rao both sit on the board.
The group owns a controlling stake in the English Football League Championship football club Blackburn Rovers having bought 99.9% of the club's shares in November 2010 through a subsidiary, Venky's London Limited, in a deal worth £43 million by using a debt facility. After sacking Sam Allardyce as the club's manager, Steve Kean was given the job, an appointment which was shrouded in a great deal of controversy since Kean's agent Jerome Anderson had earlier played a major role in advising Venky's during the takeover of the club in the preceding months. Venky's oversaw an unsuccessful period resulting in relegation to the Championship at the end of the 2011–12 Premier League season ending an 11-year run in the top flight then relegation again to League 1 in 2016/7. Despite Kean leaving Blackburn Rovers in September 2012, criticism of Venky's running of the club has continued, with both fans and the media calling them into question.
The group is also the sponsor for the Mumbai Fighters team in the World Series of Boxing and has sponsored the Indian Premier League, the ATP Mumbai Tennis Tournament and the Champions League Twenty20.