The power of mobile communication medium, apart from conventional voice services, is truly evolving in the right way as the divide between the urban and rural class with respect to access to readily available information is gradually narrowing up. Leading media house, Thomson Reuters’ subsidiary, Reuters Market Light (RML) is leveraging the mobile medium to reach out to the farming community in Maharashtra.

The company aims to offer information services of use to the farmers which will help them in various decision-making process as well as planning activities. The services on offer include information on market prices, weather conditions and other farming best practices.

RML has come up with a Krishi Voucher to bundle these services and has tied up with Idea Cellular to offer these services to the rural community in Maharashtra.

“This is a fantastic partnership to expand the unprecedented impact of RML on the farming community. We launched RML in 2007 in India as a business dedicated to address the pain points of farmers. In the process of building this pioneering business, we have continuously improved the service based on customer feedback, however rural distribution and marketing remained a challenge. The IDEA-RML Krishi Voucher, among other advantages, will directly help address this challenge. I look forward to see this expand to many more states in the near future,” says Amit Mehra, Managing Director, RML.

Idea’s Rajat Mukarji adds, “Today, two out of every three new subscribers come from rural India. Our deep-rooted network and strong customer connect in rural India makes us as the preferred network to offer value added services to rural consumers. Maharashtra, as the oldest and largest circle of IDEA, with the deepest penetration in rural parts, and a subscriber base of over 8 million becomes a good starting point for the launch of the Krishi Voucher.”

Subscribers to the services will get market prices and arrivals in 3 markets for any 2 crops chosen, 24 hour local weather forecast relevant to the taluka, information no best practices of production of 2 crops and news impacting agricultural marketing and production. The updates are available in Marathi as well as English language.

The services will be available for a monthly rental of Rs 75. A special customer care number 58090 has been set up to guide farmers in the local Marathi language.