Mr Y C Deveshwar after receiving the 'World Business Award'
at ICC World Congress on June 8, 2004 in Marrakesh.
ITC's unique internet-based rural project, 'e-Choupal', has won the inaugural 'World Business Award' instituted in support of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals. This is the first worldwide business award to recognize the significant role business can play in the implementation of the UN's targets for reducing poverty around the world by 2015. The award was announced in Paris yesterday.
The award has been instituted jointly by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the HRH Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), recognising companies the world over who have made significant efforts to create sustainable livelihood opportunities and enduring wealth in developing countries. The Award will be presented at the ICC World Congress on June 8, 2004 in Marrakesh.
Mr S Sivakumar, Chief Executive, ITC's Agri-businesses, commenting on the award, said, "ITC's e-Choupal has demonstrated that it is possible to closely dovetail the objective of business enterprises to create shareholder value with the superordinate goal of creating value for the larger society. Indeed, only such convergence can enable development efforts to be scaled up significantly."
ITC's trail-blazing 'e-Choupal' initiative is the single largest Information Technology (IT)-based intervention by a corporate entity in rural India. 'E-Choupal' enables the Indian farmer to readily access crop-specific real-time information and customised knowledge in his own native language. It thus improves the farmer's decision-making ability, thereby helping him to better align his farm output to the projected demand in Indian and international markets. The farmer's ready and easy access to expert knowledge helps significantly improve the quality of his crop and the productivity of his land, thereby fetching him much better returns. The 'e-Choupal' network also helps aggregate demand in the nature of a virtual producers' co-operative, in the process facilitating the farmer's access to higher quality farm inputs at lower costs. 'E-Choupal' also creates a direct marketing channel, eliminating wasteful intermediation and multiple handling, thus reducing transaction costs and improving logistical efficiency. 'E-Choupal' is thereby enriching the Indian farmer with knowledge and elevating him to a new order of empowerment.
The 'e-Choupal' initiative is bringing about a revolutionary transformation in Indian agriculture. The Indian farmer is consequently now evolving into a progressive knowledge-seeking netizen.
'E-Choupal' is already benefiting over 2.4 million farmers with over 4,100 e-Choupal installations covering 21, 000 villages in 6 states. Over the next decade, the e-Choupal network will cover over 100,000 villages, representing 1/6th of rural India, and create more than 10 million e-farmers.
The Millennium Development Goals, which are the benchmarks for the 'World Business Awards', were set by the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan as a challenge for the world community to achieve by 2015. They include: halving extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB.
"We cannot reach these goals without support from the private sector," Mr Annan has said of the Goals. "Most of all, we cannot reach them without a strong private sector in the developing countries themselves, to create jobs and build prosperity."
The 'World Business Awards', which will be handed out in a special ceremony in Marrakesh and later form part of a special television series, aim to encourage business to act where they are operational to alleviate poverty and promote sustainable development.
Selected from 64 nominations in 27 countries, the 'e-Choupal' project has been specially recognized for making a significant contribution to society by deploying the innovative and productive skills of a business enterprise and striving to address the challenge of development through a core business activity.