ITC e-Choupal is among the six worldwide finalists for the Development Gateway Award 2005. The winner of the $100,000 Award will be announced in September 2005. The Award recognizes outstanding achievement in using Information Technology (IT) to improve people’s lives in developing countries. The six finalists have been chosen from 135 nominations.

Working in all world regions, the nominees demonstrate the impact that technologies such as the Internet, satellite communications, smart cards, and others can have on development in various fields. The Award, previously known as the Petersberg Prize, will be presented during the Development Gateway Forum 2005 to be held on September 16-17 in Beijing. The Forum, co-hosted with the Government of China and the World Bank, will bring together the leaders in IT and development sectors from around the world to address the theme of "Information Technology and Collaborative Development."

ITC e-Choupal, the single-largest IT-based intervention by a corporate in rural India, has already received several national and international accolades as a unique transformation model for rural India. ITC has earlier won the inaugural `World Business Award' instituted in support of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals and also the Wharton-Infosys 'Enterprise Business Transformation Award 2004' for the Asia-Pacific region. The curriculum of the Harvard Business School now includes a case study on the ITC e-Choupal movement and how it is enabling a paradigm shift in Indian agriculture. The e-Choupal strategy also forms part of management guru C.K.Prahlad's latest book, 'The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid'.

ITC e-Choupal empowers over 3.5 million farmers by enabling them to readily access crop-specific, customised and comprehensive information in their native village habitat and language. Vernacular websites relating to each agricultural crop that ITC deals in, created by the Company, provide ready and real-time information to even marginal farmers on the prevailing Indian and international prices and price trends for their crop, expert knowledge on best farming practices, and micro-level weather forecast. This significantly improves the farmer's decision-making ability, thereby helping him better align his agricultural produce to market demand, secure better quality, productivity and improved price discovery. The e-Choupal model and movement helps aggregate demand by creating a virtual producers' co-operative, thus facilitating access to higher quality farm inputs at lower costs for the farmer. ITC e-Choupal also creates a two-way direct marketing channel for rural India, eliminating wasteful intermediation and multiple handling, thus significantly reducing transaction costs and improving logistical efficiency. Over the next decade, the ITC e-Choupal network aims to cover over 100,000 Indian villages, representing 1/6th of rural India, and create more than 10 million e-farmers.

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