Translates to 3rs. a day. Cost of a tea or newspaper. To receive every information you need for making your farming more productive and remunerating. Helping you reduce your production & marketing risk. A simple sms informing "market closed tomorow, do not travel to sell" saves easily 800INR. There are approx. 1500 such decision critical personalized messages sent in a year to each farmer.Farmers have reported monetary benefit in the range of INR10k to INR400k. Keep counting the ROI. It is the lowest cost line item for the farmer. This shall eventually help him save from every other line item of farming cost starting from Seeds to fertilizers to labour, electrictiy, harvesting, transporting costs. On top, it will help you to fetch better prices. Not even considering the feeling of empowerment, feeling of level playing field. It is not about ability to pay, it is about too good to beleive. Agree, hills are wide spread and low in density.

Broadly agree with you. However, the reluctance is from a fear of exploitation & disbeleif (too good to hear) in what is being told to him. We have overcome this problem by selling agri information to farmers on their mobile phone. We have sold our subscription to nearly 400,000 farmers in 13 states across India. However, we are still facing the same issue of convincing each new farmer about our Service. We are exploring ways to create sponsored/subsidised trials so that farmer does not have to pay or pays very little to experience the service and subsequently can purchase on his own upon seeing value. The returns our farmers have reported are in the range of $100 to $10000. So a small subscription fee of $15 for a year to receive all occupational and functional information needs personalized to each individual in the form of simple sms everyday becomes a strong value proposition.

If the impact assessment of any innvoaton is solid & positive for the beneficiaries, there would remain littles doubt on the effectiveness of the spend made by donors. Development Impact assessment and Donor benefit assessment is more or less aligned, if the Key Performance Indicators are agreed before hand.

I can speak on behalf of what have we done so far. - Started in 2006 with an Idea of SERVING FARMERS with Professional Information. We conducted study on over 1500 farmers trying to understand their information needs. Picked up 4 critical and universal information needs (Market prices, Weather Forecast, Crop Advisory, Agri and Rural News information). Created content around the same. Realized it is about serving PERSONALIZED content to each recepient and created technology platform around it. Completed successful pilots & launched commercially in 2007 -Today we have nearly 400k farmers who have subscribed to the service.Farmers have reported monetary benefit in the range of $100 to $8000. The service and its impact has been studied by various Government and Independent Universities/Agencies. In short we have created Universally applicable innvoation that can benefit farmers. For us it is about scaling.

* Private sector has realised the need for Socially responsible approach in addressing Rual market needs. * There is a shift from the term Commercial organizations to Socio-Economic enterprises in the context of Rural markets * ROI expectations are consideraly lower (%) and longer (no. of years) * Focus is on Volume/Scale (Low Margin-High Volume) * Focus is on cross subsidization (What you spend to generate content for farmers can be further sold to many corporates by adding some more costs). While you charge farmers a very affordable price, you charge heavy to your Enterprise customers * Win-Win Economics, Solid developmental impact can only lead to eventual Win-Win for all stakeholders (Consumers, Donors/Public Secotr/Private Sector/Others)

*Information is about personalization. Radios/TVs does not offer personalization as they are general broadcast. Everyone wants to know solutions about his individual problems. Its about "I", "ME", "MY" Where would I get best price for my crop? What should I do to prevent a particular disease? Where would I get loan at the cheapes rate? What is the Weather forecast for MY location? *Information should be in the pocket all the time. Information should be stored and available for consumption later - Only mobile phone offers this facility. TV/Radios does not. There are areas in Developing world, where electricity is available for not more then few hours in a day. How would other mediums work?? *Other tools (TV/Radio/Computers) have existed for long. However, Mobile phones have become preferred tool to consume information. Developing countries Rural area has far greater concentration of mobile phones then Computers, Sattelite TV then National TV

Completely agree. Further to add, Development agency/Donors/Multilaterals can only provide the SPEED impetus by supporting proven models to SCALE faster. The debate is meaningless and is aloof of what is already happening on ground. Pilots, Bigger Pilots, Commercial success etc.