ASK - Aasani se kisaani

Background

Agriculture plays a vital role in India’s economy. Over 58 per cent of the rural households depend on agriculture as their principal means of livelihood. At 157.35 million hectares, India holds the second largest agricultural land in the world. India is among the 15 leading exporters of agricultural products in the world, as per the Indian Agriculture Industry report by the IBEF (Indian Brand Equity Foundation)

With the numbers of rural India farmers starting to use smartphones increasing at a phenomenal rate and a company like Google investing millions to try and provide internet to most of rural India through its Project Loon, applications which help farmers to be better informed seems to be where the future lies.

Another major aspect of rural India is the belief in community interactions. Building upon this fact instead of trying to make them break away from it, I feel that any application that helps communication and interaction between village residents in a way benefitting both the parties involved will be something accepted and used well in a rural setting.

Main features of the service

• Updated information about prices in the market for that day for the various varieties. Also an option to mark a particular variety as a favourite so that the system can send notifications to the farmer in time of fall of these prices.
• Many a time the farmers need only small amount of a particular input but they are forced to buy in bulk from wholesale dealers. Hence the application will show options of other farmers in the area who are interested in buying the same kinds of inputs together.
• Many farmers have excess of one input like seeds or fertiliser which ends up rotting and causes a lot of loss and wastage and they also need some other input. Another feature of the app is to connect those in need of a particular input with those who have excess of it and allow them to make barter exchanges.
• Detailed weather information in a form that they can understand and datapoints that are relevant to their work

Note: These features were derived from some sources of secondary research and some personal understanding of how markets generally work. However as this project focused more on the interaction design process and principles, detailed primary research to validate some of the assumptions wasn't carried out.