Latha Venkatraman

ITC Ltd’s e-choupal initiative is expected to end the current fiscal with a turnover of Rs 500 crore, nearly 70 per cent higher from its earnings of Rs 300 crore in the earlier year.

The topline growth is to come from the continuous expansion of the e-choupal network during the current year, Mr. S. Sivakumar, CEO, ITC International Business Division (ITC-IBD), said.

The company is in the process of rolling out the e-choupal network in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra by setting up 500 e-choupals during the current year. This is e-choupal’s first foray into Maharashtra.

The network is being extended to Rajasthan and West Bengal. While the Maharashtra network is being extended for soyabean crop, the Rajasthan foray will be for soyabean and wheat and the West Bengal initiative for aquaculture.

"Currently, we are in the process of installing the sanchalaks for Vidarbha area," Mr. Sivakumar said. ITC has also taken an oilseed crushing plant with an annual capacity of 70,000 tonnes on hire at Nagpur. "The oil manufactured at this plant will be sold under the e-choupal brand in the rural market. This is already being done in Madhya Pradesh," Mr. Sivakumar said.

Maharashtra is the fifth State for ITC’s e-choupal’s network. The others are Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh.

ITC launched its e-choupal initiative in June 2000 and as of now has set up 2,500 e-choupals in 14000 villages catering to farmers in these four States growing soyabean, coffee, wheat, rice pulses and shrimp. Under this initiative, ITC has set up Internet kiosks in villages to help farmers access crop specific Web sites created by the company as well as price trends, weather forecast, farm practices etc.

Once the network is in place in Vidarbha, ITC will look at Sangli followed by Nasik in Maharashtra over the next two years. "We have a three year plan and the focus will be soya-bean, horticulture and cotton," Mr. Sivakumar said.

ITC, which has a strong presence in agri-business, had earlier announced plans to invest Rs 1000 crore over the next 10 years in this sector in the areas of farm forestry, integrated watershed development and the e-choupal initiative. During 2002/2003, ITC’s agri-business alone accounted for Rs 1,600 crore turnover.

As of now 50 companies were distributing its products through the e-choupal network, Mr. Sivakumar said. The company plans to channelise services related to micro-credit, insurance, health and education through the same ‘e-choupal’ infrastructure.