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It is in this regard, ITC's E-Choupal scores over HLL's Project Shakti. ITC employs both pull and push strategy. The push strategy that ITC adopts is the plan to introduce healthcare products to the rural market .The pull strategy is that the farmers can get the required information about the global market at any time (This has been facilitated by the introduction of E-Choupal). ITC procures crops from the rural farmers besides providing market information to the rural people so that, both the parties have a win-win situation. Whereas HLL's Project Shakti adopted the push strategy alone by reinventing their distribution in rural areas. It does not seem to have any proposal to improve the purchasing power of the rural people.

One of the specialties of ITC's E-Choupal is that the middlemen's role has been redefined as the consumer friendly middlemen. It is this person, who explains the information provided by the kiosks to the rural illiterate tech averse farmers. Thus, ITC has taken the advantage of trust, which the middleman has in their traditional trading. Thus, ITC's E-Choupal has raised the rural people's purchasing power to an extent possible with re-intermediation of jobs. This can be understood from the table below: -

Cost Incurred by the Farmer

Cost Incurred by the Processor

(Source: Secondary Data, India Today)

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* Contributed by -
Krithika R. & Thiruvathal M.,
MBA - II Year,
Thiagarajar School of Management, Madurai.