e-Choupals;

e-Choupal is an initiative of ITC Limited, a large multi business 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 was conceived to tackle the challenges posed by the unique features of Indian agriculture, characterized by fragmented farms, weak infrastructure and the involvement of numerous intermediaries.
• The programme involves the installation of computers with Internet access in rural areas of India to offer farmers up-to-date marketing and agricultural information.

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. At the same time ITC Limited has obtained benefits from the programme:

1. elimination of non value added activities
2. differentiated product through identity preserved supply chains
3. value added products traceable to farm practices
4. e-market place for spot transactions and support services to futures exchange

There are presently 6,500 e-Choupals in operation. ITC Limited plans to scale up to 20,000 e-Choupals by 2012 covering 100,000 villages in 15 states, servicing 15 million farmers.