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WHAT'S
HOT Rich harvest on the Net It's a classic combination of the new economy and the old. The Hyderabad-based Nagarjuna Group (core businesses: fertilisers and agro-chemicals), has launched India's first portal for farmers, www.ikisan. com. The objective: to provide farmers with information about the weather, crops, advanced agricultural techniques, and prices, and just about anything that will help them improve their efficiency. Put otherwise, the site has a Geographical Information System (GIS), a Global Positioning System (GPS), an Executive Information System (EIS), and an Agricultural Information System (AIS). Says K.S. Raju, 50, Chairman, Nagarjuna Group: ''Our idea is to ride on new technology to impart knowledge to the farmers.'' But it isn't just the information aspect of the site that is likely to contribute to its stickiness; it's the commerce aspect. For, the site will service as an e-Commerce portal where farmers can buy seeds, fertilisers, agricultural equipment, and other inputs, and sell their produce. Apart from revenues that will, eventually, accrue to ikisan from the registration fee that farmers will be charged, the ads hosted on the site (typical advertisers: agri-product companies and tractor manufacturers) will also help bring home the bacon (or, in the case of this agricultural portal, bread). Right now, though, Raju isn't speaking about revenues; he is in the investment mode and prepared to pump in between Rs 80-100 crore in the next year. Apart from the direct to customer option, ikisan is also exploring the physical cyber-intermediary route: the company has set up 10 kiosks and will soon follow up with more depending on the connectivity and the available infrastructure. Since very few farmers, apart from the extremely well-to-do ones, can be expected to own computers, these kiosks will help ikisan hurdle the penetration-barrier. The innovations that ikisan has incorporated
to reach its rural target segment, include, local language content-stage
one includes plans for information on 10 crops in 10 different
languages-and an emphasis on graphics and visuals instead of text. With
the company expecting the site to result in an increase of agricultural
output which will, indirectly, benefit other group-companies ikisan sure
is one innovative way to seed the market. e-Access They're home. Satyam Infoway became the first ISP to provide Net-access through cable. The company's trial service kicked off in Jamshedpur in late March. Next stop: Calcutta, through a strategic tie-up with telco Modi Telstra.
e-Acquisitions
e-Alliances
e-Governance
e-Launches
e-Ventures
Wired For Health If there is one thing that drives e-Commerce, it is the Siamese-twins concept of disintermediation and re-intermediation. The later is the moving force behind Ruksun Doctoranywhere.com Pvt. Ltd. (RDPL)-a Pune-based dot.com that has been founded by Chetan Shetty's software boutique, Ruksun Software Technologies. www.doctoranywhere.com hopes to connect gee-pees (general physicians) and doctors from all parts of the country to super-specialists who are located, invariably, in the major cities. Explains Shetty, 35: "We offer a Net-based platform for local practitioners to consult super-specialists at a modest cost."
How does this work? RDPL already has 85 cardiac specialists from Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Calcutta, Ahmedabad, and Pune on its rolls, and proposes to have as many as 2,000 specialists (across various disciplines) and 20,000 subscribers by end-2000. Subscribers pay a one-time installation fee of Rs 9,000 for the software, and a consultation-deposit of Rs 5,000. Every time the geepee consults a specialists, RDPL deducts the latter's consultation fee from this deposit. The company also deducts a 15 per cent transaction charge and makes payments to specialists at the end of each month. If a geepee tries to get inin touch with a specialist who is not available, the RDPL Web-team transfers the query to another equally-qualified doctor. The geepees can, once they acquire a scanner, upload reports too. Shetty, who's managed to attract venture capital of Rs 3 crore from the Alchemy Ventures, hopes to extend the site's reach to Bangladesh, Africa, and Middle-East. Meet the New Age flying doctor. Only, he flies over the wires. -Roop Karnani Safe Shopping For the 115,000-odd customers of Citibank Suvidha, a banking service Citibank offer as a pilot project in Bangalore, e-Commerce is a safe option. In January, 2000, the bank launched the country's first debit-card based e-Commerce service for Suvidha account-holders. As a first step, Suvidha has tied up with 3 e-Commerce sites: rediff, fabmart and satyamonline. Says Deepak Chandnani, 42, Business Manager, Citiban: "We are on the lookout for more sites to be added in the coming months." Indeed, what Citibank is trying to do is to become the e-Commerce portal for its Suvidha account holders. Thus, to make a purchase, an account-holder will now have to log on the Citiban's Suvidha, Website, www.citibanksuvidha.com, click on the e-shopping option, and then chose from the list of e-Commerce sites that she wants to buy from. Soon after a product is selected and a 'buy' order is placed, a payment instruction dialogue-box opens up. The user keys in the card number and the secret H-pin, and the transaction is complete. The transacted amount is debited from the user's account. And if the product does not reach the customer, or if there is something wrong with the product that does reach her, Citiban immediately credits her account for the transacted amount. The H-pin, Citiban believes, will make the transaction more secure for the customer. Clearly, as Citi has demonstrated, from bank to super-store is just a small click away on the Net. -Dilip Maitra |
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