ITC is one of India’s largest integrated agri business enterprises with significant presence across every node of the agri value chain – Crop Development, Procurement, Supply chain, Processing and Marketing. The leadership position of ITC’s Agri Business is anchored in its strong and enduring partnerships with farmers across the country, which has revolutionized the agricultural sector in rural India. With its revolutionary e-Choupal network that has recently completed 20 years, ITC has created a vibrant eco-system in the rural economy that benefits more than 4 million farmers. ITC has plans to reach out to 10 million farmers by 2030 through its latest version of e-Choupal 4.0 that leverages digital platforms and provides end to end personalised services to farmers.
According to Mr Rajnikant Rai, Divisional Chief Executive – Agri Business Division, ITC Limited, “The recent agricultural marketing reforms initiated by the Government will catalyse fresh innovations in the farm sector with the involvement of the corporate sector. This has the potential to enhance efficiencies in production and marketing of farm products, thereby growing farm incomes and ensuring greater price stability and predictable availability of farm products to end consumers. Against this backdrop, ITC’s legendary e-Choupal initiative provides a rock-solid backbone for farmers to accelerate the pace of this change. With expansion of digital connectivity and adoption of digital technologies by new generation of farmers, e-Choupal 4.0 is ready to take the farm to consumer value chain story to the next level”.
ITC Agri Business
ITC Agri Business is one of the leading domestic players and exporters of numerous agricultural commodities. Its portfolio covers more than 30 different kinds of commodities – including Wheat and Wheat based products (Maida), Rice, Soya, Coffee, Shrimps, Processed Fruits, Potato, Spices, Pulses, Barley and Maize spread across more than 21 states. Backed by decades of crop development expertise, the Business deploys customised infrastructure and technology to supply a range of differentiated and superior products to discerning customers in India and abroad.
e-Choupal eco-system
The ITC e-Choupal network which is the world’s largest rural digital infrastructure leverages information technology to empower farmers. It is a rich repertoire of agri based interventions, which not only addresses the core needs of farmers in terms of infrastructure, connectivity, price discovery and market access, but also provides a significant boost to farm productivity through extension services and research based agri-inputs. Initiatives like the ‘Choupal Pradarshan Khet’ bring suitable agricultural best practices to farmers and have demonstrated significant productivity gains. Under the e-Choupal network, ITC has also set up rural integrated hubs called Choupal Saagars that serve as procurement centres, warehouses and retail outlets. Engagement with the rural consumers is facilitated at marketing platforms, called Choupal Haats that ITC has built along the lines of village fairs. The endeavour also includes Swasthya Choupal that focuses on enhancing awareness on maternal health and child-care.
These interventions have helped transform village communities into vibrant economic organisations, by enhancing incomes and co-creating markets. Empowerment and trust built amongst the farming community remains at the core of this model. This eco-system has empowered over 4 million farmers.
The e-Choupal network through its various phases of evolution has offered a set of integrated solutions that raise farm productivity and enhance farmer incomes through a value chain reorganisation which has led to the efficient transmission of consumer demand signals to enable a responsive production system. The ITC e-Choupal initiative aims at holistic empowerment of farmers through meaningful linkages. The ITC e-Choupal system has enabled the development of an efficient ‘Farm to Fork’ agri-value chain that ensures the delivery of identity preserved and traceable agri-produce.
The revolutionary model has gone through several stages of evolution and is today a case study on farmer empowerment and effective agri interventions in universities across the world.
The latest version in the e-Choupal model, e-Choupal 4.0 in the present format focuses on strengthening agricultural entrepreneurship and agri-tech start-ups through agri services aggregator models, thereby empowering the farmers in multi-dimensional ways with modern technology and knowhow, crop advisory, assessment of crop stress, weather forecasts and so on, which is being translated into higher incomes for farmers. e-Choupal 4.0, which primarily uses mobile phones and digital technology, started multiple pilots in 2019. It will be a plug and play platform for agri tech start-ups. Under this model, the parameter for attaining scale has shifted to number of villages and farmers being added under the ecosystem vis-a-vis addition in physical formats of e-Choupals. Under the e-Choupal 4.0, personalisation of services will get sharpened and will be driven by data analytics.
Baareh Mahine Hariyali
Taking this a step forward, in line with the Government’s vision of enhancing farmer income, ITC has launched an integrated programme titled ‘Baareh Mahine Hariyali’ to give a new dimension to the complex task of multiplying farmer incomes, addressing a critical national need. The project has been implemented in several districts of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, reaching out to nearly two lakh farmers. Around 30,000 farmers have reported doubling of income under the initiative.
Support to Branded Packaged Food Business
The Company’s deep rural linkages and expertise in agri-commodity sourcing, coupled with differentiation through value-added services of identity preservation, traceability and certification, are a critical source of competitive advantage for ITC’s Branded Packaged Food Business, especially for The Business continues to support the growing requirements for Aashirvaad atta, delivering substantial savings to the system through deep farmer engagement, sourcing the right wheat varieties, efficient logistics management and other cost-optimisation initiatives.
ITC’s Spices Business is expanding in Food Safe Markets, viz., US, EU and Japan, leveraging its strong backward integration and customer focused strategies. The Business’s Integrated Crop Management (ICM) programme for chilli and cumin, enhances its ability to produce food safe spices in a sustainable manner. The Business has also strengthened its milk procurement network for ‘Aashirvaad Svasti’ Dairy Products.
High value-added products include branded frozen prawns and packaged frozen snacks under the ‘ITC Master Chef’ range. The ‘Super Safe’ frozen prawns adhere to the stringent standards prevalent in USA, Europe, and Japan. The Business has expanded its footprint in branded potatoes by offering differentiated varieties of low sugar, antioxidant, baby potatoes and French fry potatoes.