Product Description
Sagu means cultivation in Telugu language. eSagu provides a quality personalized agro-advice to the farmers starting from pre-sowing operations to post-harvest precautions. Founded in March 2004, the operation of eSagu involves a team of agriculture experts who work at the main eSagu centre, normally located in a city, supported by agricultural information system. One eSagu local center comprising few computers and one computer operator is set up for a group of about ten villages. A coordinator, who is an educated and experienced farmer, is stationed in the village and is in touch with agricultural experts daily.

Depending on the crop, each coordinator is assigned with a fixed number of farms. The coordinator collects the registration details of the farms under him including soil data, water resources, and capital availability and sends the information to the main eSagu system. Every day, the coordinator visits a fixed number of farms and takes four to five photographs for each farm. A CD is then prepared containing the photographs and other information and sent to the main system by a regular courier service, which the agricultural scientist uses to suggest the next course of action for the farmers.

Citation
Imaginative use of ICT is endless to catalyze rural India and those dependent on agriculture. The digital flow of information helps a farmer take critical decisions faster drawing from the expertise the country has invested enormously in agricultural colleges and research institutes. The eSagu system enables farmers, even those who are marginal and poor, to cultivate with the knowledge on par with that of an agricultural expert. It demonstrates that even the illiterate farmer could be helped to raise his income and standard of living through delivery of appropriate information at the right time. The system also aids in successful implementation of crop insurance scheme by making farm as a unit of insurance.

The eSagu is a scalable system. It is a cost-effective system and can be made self-sustainable. The expert advice given through eSagu has helped the farmers to improve input efficiency by encouraging integrated pest management methods, judicious use of pesticides and fertilizers by avoiding their indiscriminate usage. The impact study shows that the farmers have realized considerable additional monetory benefits equivalent to Rs 3,820 per acre by reducing the fertilizers and pesticide sprays, and getting the additional yield. The agriculture scientist can deliver about 150 expert advices per day. This is possible by reusing the already delivered advices and following a clustered-based approach.

Producer
Dr P Krishna Reddy
Dr G V Ramaraju (MLA)
Organisation
International Institute for Information Technology, Hyderabad and Media Lab Asia
Location
Andhra Pradesh
Telephone
040 – 23002314
09884154092
Email
pkreddy@iiit.ac.in
URL
www.esagu.in/esagu/esagu/2005
www.iiit.ac.in/~pkreddy
Technology/Medium
Cross Media
Language
English

Product
Description
DesiCrew Solutions has taken
BPO kind of job opportunities to the rural masses in Tamil Nadu and thereby
introduced opportunities of livelihood using computers in villages. Its delivery
centers are located in rural areas, which provide a cost advantage to the
clients with no compromise on quality. It has 10 functional delivery centers –
each equipped with 3-10 PCs, connectivity and power back up. Each center is
staffed with a supervisor and 3-10 associates. The centers run in one or two
shifts of 8 working hours.

DesiCrew employs unemployed rural youth and trains them
extensively raising their quality of service and productivity. Its delivery
centers offer variety of services in English, Tamil, Hindi, and Gujarati
languages in areas such as data entry involving digitization of manuscripts,
form from insurance companies, telecom providers and directories. It also offers
services such as maintaining and updating the sales lead database, data
conversion, proof reading, type setting, data translation and data
transcription.

DesiCrew has also developed two web-based applications
to organize its distributed workforce, which acts as a virtual office for the
rural delivery centers.

Citation
DesiCrew has created a win-win situation by replicating the
urban BPO model in rural India and raising the local human resource to global
standards through extensive training. The initiative has a huge impact on rural
minds, who don’t feel left out from the fruits of globalization. At the same
time the companies who get their work done through these rural centers receive
high value service at low cost compared to what they would have paid in urban
India. The model has immense potential for replication in other states
generating employment of educated youth in rural India and checking mindless
migration to big towns and cities.

Over the last two years, DesiCrew has grown to a 10
member team (central office) and 60 (at the Delivery centers) offering seven
different services. It has delivered over 25 projects with 12 clients in two
cities.

Producer
Saloni
Malhotra
OrganisationDesiCrew Solutions Pvt
Ltd
Location
Tamil Nadu
Telephone
044 – 22575428
Email
saloni@desicrew.in
URL
www.desicrew.in
Technology/Medium
Broadband/Online/Offline
Language
English & Other
Languages