Mandi Bhav on your Tata...

I’ve gotta admit, I am impressed with Tata Indicom. They come up with the most useful (to rural consumers) app partnerships.

Thanks to the “Financial Inclusion through Mobile Phones” seminar I attended (organised by IAMAI), I met up with the product director for Impetus. Impetus is a mobile/ Internet app firm based out of Indore, and has had several innovative apps out in the market.

They were the first ones to launch “Mythology” on mobiles. The “Gayatri Mantra” ringtone they have has had 20 million downloads from diff operator portals, and is the most popular one in India. Besides that, they have apps for the iPhone as well.

But the interesting (to this space here) was the rural app called “Mandi Bhav” which works with Tata Indicom. Mandi Bhav has a BREW, J2ME, IVR version. It can be downloaded from the operator portal and has a specific interface it works on- it’s not SMS based. It also has an IVR version which farmers who can’t read can use. It already comes in 8-9 Indian languages, and that is independent of the mobile one may have, i.e. even if the hardware doesn’t support different languages, the software ensures a display.

What Mandi Bhav does is this:

• Get content of prices (min & max) in a local wholesale market (mandi) for a day. This is done with the help of the local people network of Impetus
• The application loads and gives these details to farmers who can then determine which mandi to go to. Mostly these mandis are within a 3-5 km range, and thus it makes sense for the farmer to get this info early on.

From the impact perspective, I didn’t have actual number details, but from what I heard, the application is doing really well in Gujarat, where farmers tend to have a stronger business sense, and are more aware of the app itself. Currently Tata runs this app in 24 Indian states.

Impetus says, that generic low awareness levels is what needs to be worked at to improve adoption of Mandi Bhav.

I think from language, to literacy onwards to usability, the app seems to have gotten all the basics right. Amazing stuff, and about awareness, I really don’t understand why companies aka Tata in this case, can’t push their marketing on this cool stuff more?

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