SBI Further Empowers Farmers with YONO Krishi; Introduces Kisan Credit Card Review on the Platform

Kisan Credit Card (KCC) 

* Bank introduces KCC Review feature on the YONO Krishi platform which has been witnessing great response from farmers

* YONO KCC Review to enable farmers access their KCC limit on YONO in just four clicks

* YONO KCC Review to benefit more than 75 lakh farmers

* YONO KCC review will empower farmers to embrace digital technology and make them future-ready

* YONO Krishi platform offers a one-stop solution to all farmers’ agricultural needs

Country’s largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) continues to empower its farmer customers by offering them technology backed agricultural solutions with YONO Krishi. The recently launched platform that caters to all the requirements of farmers – from sowing to harvesting and then selling – has been receiving significant traction from the farmers. In the current unprecedented times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, SBI is set to make lives easier for its farmer customers by introducing the KCC Review option on YONO Krishi. With this added feature, farmers will no longer need to travel the distance to visit the bank branch to apply for a revision in their KCC limit. KCC Review option on YONO Krishi will help farmers apply for the same in just 4 clicks from the comfort of their homes without any paperwork.

Recognizing the fact that not all farmers may have access to smartphones, SBI has also streamlined the KCC review process at its branches. KCC Review on YONO Krishi is expected to benefit more than 75 lakh farmers having KCC accounts with SBI. The feature of paperless KCC review will not only help farmers save costs and effort involved in applying for revision of the KCC limit, but also make the process quicker for them especially during the harvesting season.

Rajnish Kumar, Chairman, SBI said, “Introduction of YONO KCC Review on YONO Krishi is SBI’s yet another initiative to make our farmer customers, future-ready by offering them constant digital innovations pertaining to their agricultural needs. This new feature has been added keeping in mind millions of our valuable farmer customers’ convenience and safety. We believe that they will now be experiencing hassle-free application process for their KCC limit revision. With a Digital-First approach, it is SBI’s continuous endeavor to provide innovative digital banking solutions to all our diverse set of customers across the country.”

Apart from KCC Review, the multi-lingual YONO Krishi platform - which is bringing-in technology to farmers in more than 10 vernacular languages - is offering services such as YONO Khata, YONO Bachat, YONO Mitra and YONO Mandi to its farmer customers. These unique offerings facilitate farmers with Agri loan products, an online marketplace to buy and rent agricultural inputs and equipment, customized farming advisory, investment, and crop insurance products, instant agri gold loan, upgrade to scientific farming practices, and much more. With YONO Krishi, SBI has opened the doors of digital agriculture to farmers. In just one year of its launch, YONO Krishi has disbursed more than 14 lakh Agri Gold loans and has seen more than 15 lakh clicks on YONO Mandi and YONO Mitra

YONO itself has grown by leaps and bounds over the last two and a half years since its launch. It has seen more than 58 million downloads with over 26 million registered users. YONO has partnered with over 80 e-commerce players in more than 20 categories. The bank’s flagship banking and lifestyle platform – YONO is also tasting success in international markets such as the UK and Mauritius.

One billion mobile users in India by 2015

India could have more than one billion mobile phone users by 2015, with the bulk of that growth in rural areas, one of the country's top telecom executives said on Wednesday.

Manoj Kohli, chief executive of India's biggest mobile phone group Bharti Airtel, told an industry conference in Hong Kong that his firm is aiming to almost double its customer base to 200 million people in the next few years.

"Achieving a billion plus (Indian mobile users) by 2015 is possible," he told the Mobile Asia Congress, the region's largest telecom industry gathering.

"The largest growth will happen in the rural market," he said, adding that pricing wars between providers were knocking down rates in the Indian market and making phones affordable to more people.

Competition in India has become even more aggressive as new players unleash deeper price cuts with innovative per-second billing plans that have pushed call costs down to less than a cent a minute.

"There is hyper-competition like no other place in the world," he said.

India is the world's second-biggest cellular market with more than 400 million users, lagging behind only China, which has over 600 million users.

Rural customers are also seen as key to growth in China, said Chang Xiaobing, chairman of China Unicom, one of the nation's three major telecoms operators.

The company aims to tap "vast rural areas" for growth as demand for basic mobile voice services slows in saturated urban markets, he said, with customers now looking for multi-function devices that can send emails or play movies.

"Voice is a mature market in some areas, but we still see some growth potential," Chang told the conference. "Voice will be in continuous demand (in China)."

But Chinese operators must boost their data business to offset falling prices on voice calls, he said.

Chang has said he expects Apple's iconic iPhone, which Unicom distributes, will be China's highest-selling smartphone despite disappointing results after its official launch this month.

Mobile connections in Asia Pacific are expected to cross the two billion mark this year, more than triple the level in 2003, according to statistics released by conference organiser GSMA, a mobile industry trade group.

Agencies

Can messaging technology attracts rural mobile users?

India has emerged as the most favorable market for telecom players with the rate of mobile users growing at over 10 million per month. By end of 2008, there were 340 million active mobile users in the country. After focusing the needs of the enterprises, urban users and the youth, the spotlight is now on the rural users with most players looking at avenues to expand in the rural markets. Even though mobile phones have reached the rural areas, simple applications such as messaging is still a foreign mode of communication; the most common reason being unfamiliarity to English.

Realizing the needs of rural people, Noida based Luna Ergonomics, a texting technology company has come up with a software, which will help people send text messages in 11 major Indian languages by using only 'ek angootha' (one thumb). One just needs to upload the company's Panini software in his/her mobile phone and start using the texting facilities. But this technology can only be used only in mobiles that have java applications pre-installed.

The company has made available four versions of the software - Panini Basic, Panini Clever, Panini Premium, and Panini Touch. Specifications have been done according to the usage of every version. Panini Premium would offer a superior version of CleverTexting and different modes of Ergonomic typing on the phone than Panini Basic and Panini Clever. Major Abhijeet Bhattacharjee, Founder, Luna Ergonomics says, "Panini software also offers SMS compression, first of its kind in the world, increasing the payload of an SMS in an Indian language by over 300 percent. Once a message is compressed, it is sent in encrypted form."

"Other than mobile phones, this software can also be used in other devices like remote and set-top-box," he explains.

"To make this facility available to large number of people, we are in talks with phone handset companies to pre-embed the application on the phone. We are also trying to negotiate with well known retails," says, Bhattacharjee. This technology could be very useful for mobile marketing services, he adds. In the beta version of the launch, the company has witnessed over 50,000 downloads from all across India and world.

With an aim of providing better technology to connect all through regional languages in the country, Bhattacharjee, a retired army officer founded Luna Ergonomics in 2008. Prior to founding the company, he had worked in organization like Gurus Media, Monster.com in different posts. Under the umbrella of Luna Ergonomics, five employees currently work on the development of this technology.

The company plans to unveil its latest product in the siliconindia Start-up City event to be held on June 06 in Bangalore.

SiliconIndia

Strong reactions by CEOs on BJP IT vision document

As most election manifestos go, BJP's IT Vision Document, recently put up on its official website, promises a lot - ranging from generating 1.2 crore new IT-enabled jobs in rural areas, introducing IT in education and healthcare services, to making available laptops at Rs 10,000 to 1 crore students and setting up Digital Security Agency.

Following are some of the reactions to the vision document from CIOs and CEOs CXOtoday spoke to.

Vivek Kulkarni, former IT secretary of Karnataka, who is now the chairman and CEO of BrickWork India, said, "The IT vision of BJP will really come handy for creation of new job opportunities in the IT and ITeS sector in India where we still have a large percentage of unemployed graduates struggling to provide their services for the growth of the country."

Sudhindra Mokhasi, founder & CEO of e-Sutra, sees the document as overall a comprehensive and ambitious statement of intent, especially the open source preference, e-governance thrust, wider last-mile internet access, 100 million low-cost computers, education and financing.

"In a few cases it's probably better to let the incremental approach like converting post offices into e-service centers and creating higher density of Internet kiosks to take root before attempting ambitious plans like smart phones for bank access for all BPL population," Mokhasi said.

Similarly more robust envisioning needs to be done to ensure that providers of the solutions are predominantly Indian IT companies so there is a full 360 degree of benefit to the Indian society," said Mokhasi.

In all, however, most of these vision statements are significantly focused on the infrastructure supply, education and empowerment side of the divide," he said.

Terming the document a positive intent, Ramakrishna Voruganti, managing director of Barracuda Networks (India), said, MNIC will help traceability of transactions and will result in better tax collections.

"Having an open standard and adaptation of open source will level the playing field for enterprises. The cyber security initiative and the establishment of DSA will provide enormous possibilities for Indian IT security professionals while providing opportunities for organizations like Barracuda Networks, who have been in the forefront of countering cyber threats," Voruganti said.

Ajay Dhir, CIO of Jindal Steel, said the multipurpose national identity card (MNIC) with unique citizen identification number for every Indian citizen is a good initiative. "Besides, the other schemes like IT-enabled jobs in rural areas, 1 crore students to get laptop computers at Rs 10,000 are all good schemes. Overall, one can say that it is a progressive vision."

The initiative to provide IT-enabled jobs was also welcomed by Voruganti especially since the government is acting a catalyst rather than as an agency.

"The linking of PHCs, schools and colleges, use of IT in agriculture, rural development, SMEs, retail trade, informal and unorganised will greatly impact at the grassroots, will improve the off-farm employment in the villages, and prevent labour migration," he said.

Some of the measures are populist, but that is expected during the polls, was the general sentiment about BJP's IT Vision Document.

CXOtoday