ITC's e-Choupal direct farmer procurement network

This large diversified conglomerate, needing reliable agricultural commodity procurement for its business, built a network of internet-enabled kiosks in villages, each managed by a trained local farmer, giving surrounding farmers direct access to real-time crop prices, weather information, and farming best practices.

Before this network, farmers typically sold through several layers of intermediaries at village markets, with price discovery happening far from the farmer and information asymmetry generally favouring traders over producers.

By giving farmers direct price transparency and, eventually, the option to sell directly to the company at their village rather than transporting produce to a distant market, the network reduced the number of intermediary layers and associated costs for participating farmers, while giving the company more reliable, traceable procurement.

The model became a widely studied example of using accessible technology to restructure an agricultural supply chain, expanding to cover a large number of villages and multiple crop categories over time.