RainbowAgri, the Internet for Farmers - NIC Library

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App AlertRainbowAgri, the Internet for Farmers

Farmers empowered with real-time information con-nected to global markets – that is the Digital India vision that drives Coimbatore-based Selva Kumar, Founder of Greeno Tech Solutions. His company has developed a bunch of apps that can take digital technology to the

farmer enabling him in ways not seen so far. After completing his formal education in Information Technology, Selva Kumar worked for various IT organizations before he founded Greeno Tech Solutions in 2012.

This first generation entrepreneur’s company Greeno Tech Solutions is an IT solution provider that specializes in Informa-tion Products, Mobility Solutions and Web Products for national and international organizations. Greeno (Green + Innovation = Greeno) primarily develops and manages payroll solutions for

banks in the Middle East and Africa. The growth curve was a smooth ride for Greeno, and a sustainable revenue generating pattern was established for Selva Kumar’s venture. But, Kumar knew that these solutions are no different from other IT solu-tions providers and Greeno was certainly not doing anything for the farming community he belonged to. There was an urge within him to create a technology that could directly benefit the farmers in increasing their crop yield, manage their produce and directly sell the produce to the market, thereby doing away with the middleman. And removing the middleman from the equation for the farmers meant that they increase their revenue and add to their profits.

In 2013, a right opportunity presented itself to Kumar. He participated in the Nasscom-backed Central Government’s

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text and voice messages in regional languages easily and quickly. The app broadcasts voice messages (such as information on meetings, diseases, vaccinations, weather, market price, news, fertilizer vendors, and dam water level) to smartphones and to basic feature phones. The app facilitates bulk and unlimited mes-saging and works with even very basic internet connection. It also

programming challenge on Open Data Apps. Kumar took the opportunity to create a dashboard for the agriculture sector, where farmers could gather news related to agriculture, prices of commodities, authorized pesticide and seed vendors in the locality, and dam water levels. Kumar emerged as a finalist in this challenge.

Rolling Rainbow Agri Apps The Open Data App Challenge gave Kumar the confidence to develop an app specific for the farmers’ needs. With the revenue from Greeno, Kumar created a spin-off called RainbowAgri – Internet for Farmers. Apps suitable for low bandwidth were created. But when the apps were tested in reality, the farmers were not comfortable with its usage as it was not of real-time use. The farmers demanded a communication platform, where the farmer’s group head could send out one message to notify fellow farmers on meetings, cattle vaccination, tax issues and other day-to-day communications. His team worked on field, gathered other needs of the farmer, improvised the Rainbow apps (i.e., Rainbow Buy, Rainbow Sell and Rainbow Groups) and also developed an exclusive app for communication called Rainbow Message. RainbowAgri helps the farmer federations to profile and connect all the farmers in their entire district and help them market their products, record transactions, design their logos and help them in branding and online marketing.

“In the agriculture sector, there are a number of functional farmer groups. They have a real time problem in communicating among themselves. It was practically impossible for the head to make 200 calls to the farmers in his group to keep them informed on meetings and vaccination schedules. Rainbow apps play a significant role here. A single voice message sent through the app gets delivered to 200 or more farmers. Essentially, the app has eased mass communication for the farmers,” elaborates Kumar. Here is a peek into some of the Ranibow apps:

Rainbow Message: This app is used by Lead Farmers and Farm Coordinators to organize their contacts and communicate

Selva Kumar dreams to connect 1 lakh farmers in India with his brainchild Rainbow Agri Apps that facilitate farmer-to-farmer as well as farmer-to-market interactions in regional languages.

—Selva Kumar, Founder, Greeno Tech Solutions

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tracks the messages and their delivery. “This app has been critical in conducting periodical vaccination against Foot and Mouth Disease for cattle. The veterinary doctor communi-cates the campaign date and location to the network of farmers via voice message sent through the app. More than 1,000 farmers have been benefitted through this timely information,” says Kumar.

Rainbow Groups: This simple mobile- and web-based tool to profile the farmers, organize and manage farming communities such as Farmer Federation, JLG, WFG, FIG and FPO, the app digitizes farm documents, land and crop details of the farmers. It pro-vides real time analytics on farm details. This app is specifically designed and built for Farmer Producer Organization’s (FPO) data management. The app houses all information regarding the land-owner, his cultivation, fertilizer requirement and yield. As the information is stored in cloud, it is easy to access the data from the browser or the app from any geographic locations with the use of minimal Internet connection. “This app provides vital information to the farmers. Through the app, the group head alerts the farmers on availability of potential buyers for their produce during harvest season,” explains Kumar.

Rainbow Buy: This is a mobile tool for buying agriculture produces and groceries available nearby. RainbowBuy discovers and connects local vendors including direct farmers, shops and street vendors. It is also used as PoS (point of sale) by farmers, at their shops/ sell locations. The app tracks order status, sorts the commodities by price, order, and history. “Through the RainbowBuy app poultry farm owners have sold 3,000 eggs to the end users without the middleman. More than 100 sellers in remote South Indian villages have started selling their products through RainbowBuy,” informs Kumar.

Rainbow Sell: Rainbow Sell is a simple mobile point of sale for farmers, street vendors and small stores. It also helps them to market their produce online. For farmers it offers better price discovery. “This app is customizable to suit the farmer needs. Vendors can enter details in their regional language. Kumar is especially proud of his Rainbow Sell app. He says, “My app has directly benefitted farmers who produce millets and millet-based products. The farmers process the millets and directly approach the organic stores listed in my app. The produce is sold by the farmers themselves, eliminating the middleman in buying and selling.”

With the implementation of these apps, Kumar has gone a step further in aggregating a large database of more than 15,000 farmers located in Tamil Nadu’s profit generating ag-ricultural areas like Erode, Salem, Coimbatore and Madurai. “The database is useful not only in having information about

the farmers, but it also helps in organizing group specific activity for farmers. One such activity was getting 500 farmers together for a cattle show,” exclaims Kumar.

And this is not all! In the pipeline is RainbowMarket, an app for wholesale buying and selling of agri produce. This has been under development for the past three months and is set for launch next month. “The app aims to bridge the gap between whole sale buyers and farmers. It provides them an im-mediate opportunity to connect with potential buyers in their own districts.”

The next big step forward for Kumar is pilot-ing a project for NABARD, an apex development bank for rural and agricultural development in India. The bank wants Selva Kumar to digitally connect all of Tamil Nadu’s Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) on one single platform. Kumar

has begun the process of creating a dashboard for NABARD, which will house all the activities of FPCs. The initial phase of this project will involve Kumar’s effort in developing the dashboard for 60 FPCs in Tamil Nadu. Based on the success of this development, NABARD will scale up the project to digitize 2,000 FPCs across India. The project has been wholly funded by NABARD. The data compiled on the dashboard will be similar to the electronic records maintained by a healthcare firm that is stored in cloud.

Kumar intends to create Rainbow Agri as a separate entity once the project with NABARD for Tamil Nadu is completely executed. “Although, I have been approached by investors for expanding my operations, I feel I am not ready as yet. I would like to remain boot strapped as now. I would approach investors when NABARD sanctions the National-level project. I want to get the metrics right for the company. I am in talks with some of my friends who work for India’s leading Venture Capital firms and at the right time they would help me raise funds,” says Kumar. The company is expected to raise $1 to $2 million as seed fund.

Kumar is confident about his company’s steady growth. Irre-spective of NABARD’s project, he says that his app will soon help 10,000 FPC in their day-to-day activities. “A farmer in the most remote corner of South India has only 3 apps downloaded in his basic smartphone. One is Whatsapp, two is Facebook and the third app is Rainbow Agri,” proudly states Kumar. With the obvi-ous penetration of Internet in the deep agricultural areas of the Tamil Nadu, Kumar is bullish on hitting 100,000 downloads for his app. And with the launch of budget smartphones in combination with attractive data plans by India’s service providers, Kumar is certain that it won’t be long before his apps will reach out to 1 lakh farmers. He is also banking big time on Google’s Project Loon to aid his dream of reaching out to farmers in India.

Anusha Ashwin [email protected]


Freecharge’s On-The-Go-Pin has been developed keeping in mind the requirements of Quick Serving Restaurants (QSRs) and other sectors that look at providing fast service to their customers.

YES Bank revamps ‘Mobile First’ website

India’s fifth largest pri-vate sector Bank, Yes Bank has launched its new revamped website www.yesbank.in to offer a consistent, superior customer experience op-timized across all brows-ers, tablets and mobile phones.

YES Bank recognizes that mobile is increasingly becoming the preferred channel for accessing the website and in line with this, the website has adopted a “Mobile-First” philosophy offering enhanced features for smartphones. The Bank will also migrate to the new URL www.yes.bank thereby becoming the first bank in India to launch the customer centric bank domain.

Besides a vibrant new look, the YES Bank website now has even more advanced features to improve your experience and simplify your banking decisions. Understanding the need for customer’s to access their account on the go, YES BANK has ensured that the website is user-friendly across browsers and devices, offering easy and friendly navigation, interactive tools and calculators, extensive information about our products & services combined with an extremely safe Internet Banking platform.

The Bank had also recently launched the Star Star service, which enables customers to reach the bank by dialling Star Star BANK (**2265) from the smartphone keypad. This service, which is highly popular in several global markets like the USA and Australia is expected to significantly aid customer call to action, especially for a generic call number as BANK.

India’s leading Digital Payments platform, Freecharge is part-nering with Barista to enable consumers to go cashless and pay with Freecharge wallet at 135 outlets across 21 cities of India.

Barista is one of the biggest coffee restaurant chains in India offering coffee and tea with all kind of International flavors.

The partnership is aimed at making the bill payment process swifter and more secure for consumers. The waiting time at the counters will reduce significantly as consumers can pay in less than 10 seconds by generating the On-The-Go-Pin on their mobiles to complete the transaction. With each partnership, Freecharge is expanding its offline presence and acceptance of digital payments for consumers.

Eros now available on Android TV Kishore Lulla-led Eros International’s digital over-the-top dis-tribution service, Eros Now, is now available on Android TV.

Eros Now’s extensive library of Bollywood and regional language films and music videos, will now be made available on Android TVs. A range of widely popular TV manufacturers worldwide run the Android TV platform on their devices and Eros Now will be available to download on all these TVs across the globe.

The leading Indian entertainment platform includes features such as full length movies, thematic curated playlists, English and Arabic subtitles for movies, music video playlists, regional language filters, video progression and access to a watchlist of titles discovered on any media platform that Eros Now is available on. Subscribers can now download the Eros Now app through the Google Play Store.

The app is now available on leading smart TV platforms like Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung, and Chromecast and so on.

Freecharge wallet enabled at Barista

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India’s first non-banking mobile wallet app Oxigen Wallet has partnered with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL).

While until now cash and cards had been the major accepted mode of payments at these petroleum pumps, the association is set to allow users to pay for fuel refills using Oxigen Wallet app.

Oxigen Wallet has been on a rapid expansion spree, following with the recent launch of Virtual Visa. The partnership is slated to further up the ante for Oxigen Wallet in the digital payments domain, as a benefit for the users. The recent alliance with the HPCL takes away the pain of carrying cash or paying for fuel using cards, thereby making payments swifter, and minimizing credit card exposures.

At present, 61 HPCL outlets spanning across India, includ-ing New Delhi, Noida & Greater Noida, Gurugram (Gurgaon), Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Chennai are prepped to accept payments directly from the Oxigen Wallet mobile app. In the coming two months, Oxigen Wallet is set to strengthen its part-nership further, by onboarding more than 2,000 HPCL outlets to accept payments for fuel using the Oxigen Wallet Mobile app.

Gurgaon-based Oyo joined hands with ItzCash to tap the next 500 million underserved Indian consumer segment. The tie-up will facilitate effortless payments for hotel-bookings across 5,500 hotels in over 170 cities in India through ItzCash’s easy money transfer solutions.

With this partnership ItzCash is going aggressive in hotel booking and aims to double its volume and clock Rs 400 crore by FY18. ItzCash is backed by Lightspeed Ventures, which is also an investor in Oyo.

The partnership will help Oyo tap potential consumers who do not have access to either a debit or a credit card. ItzCash is already a dominant player in travel segment, and will offer access to Oyo via an online co-branded portal as well as offline outlets. Both partners also have existing synergies such as deep integration with IRCTC. ItzCash offers travel-booking service through its strong network of 75,000 plus pan-India network of retail touch points.

Elaborating on the part-nership, Ritesh Agarwal, CEO & Founder, Oyo said, “The

Along with adding security, the entire process is pretty simple and straightforward. The user needs to generate a One Time Password (OTP) before entering the HPCL Outlet. The user then needs to share the OTP pin along with their mobile number to the petrol pump representative and the required amount will be deducted from the user’s Oxigen Wallet.

partnership with ItzCash will enable us to reach the large traveller-base that transacts through offline channels. ItzCash is a trusted partner for these customers and this long-standing association will undoubtedly help them build preference and familiarity with Oyo”

Naveen Surya, Managing Director – ItzCash said, ‘’We aim to address the problem faced by a large section of so-ciety who is unaware of doing advance hotel booking at an affordable rate. Travel & Hotel bookings account for 12-15 % of ItzCash business and with this association it’s going to be the fastest growing sector for us. It is expected to grow

at 60% year-on-year.’’ With its disruptive busi-

ness model, Oyo is the pio-neer of standardized hotel segment, bringing in predict-ability, affordability and ac-cessibility to the hospitality sector. It is also one of the very few start-ups that have played a significant role in the sharing economy revolution in the Indian ecosystem through a range of tie-ups that enable convenience, standardization and choice.

Oxigen Wallet joins hands with HPCL

ItzCash partners with Oyo

RainbowAgri, the Internet for Farmers - NIC Library

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