Rural Marketing

1. Challenges faced by Honorable Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu in building of the prototype smart village in Mori?

A.

• support of the central government
• Budgeting for the smart village
• Enthusiasm from the villagers of Mori.
• Allocation of resources to provide the required infrastructure.
• villagers trust

B. Challenges faced by the villagers:

Agriculture and Livelihood:

• Water grid: Distribution is arbitrary, making planning difficult for farmers.
• Supply chain issues at coconut farms
• Rice crop losses due to challenges related to: soil, irrigation, pesticide and         fertilizer supplies, and lack of weather forecasts.
• Shrimp farming offers high margins but creates problems, including soil         salinization.
• Soil damage from salinization is increasing due to shrimp farming.
• Corruption: Although shrimp farming near rice fields is banned, it is still         practiced.
• Alternative high-margin crops (lentils, peanuts, and sesame) require labor that is unavailable.
• Cashew processing is done in homes and offers decent margins but can be dangerous         and a source of carbon emissions.
• Lack of cold storage facility leads to rampant waste of farmed produce.
• Few farmers own land; 80 percent lease and struggle to profit after paying for inputs.

Employment:

• Legacy industries, such as handloom, pottery, and goldsmiths, are in decline.
• Labor shortages arise from emigration; which people do to support their         families.
• Those still working in the handloom industry make low wages (for example, 100         Rupees per sari, about $1.50).
• Government work programs add to the labor shortage.
• Lack of information means the workforce has no awareness about alternative choices.
• Lack of tools and resources means people struggle to find their own ways to         prosper.
• Need for and demand for higher wages of 450 Rupees per day (about $6.73) rather than 180 to 250 Rupees per day (about $2.65 to about $3.69).
• Unsold handloom inventory worth between 3,000,000 and 5,000,000 Rupees
• Mechanization and automation have essentially destroyed handicraft,                 handloom, and goldsmith industries.
• Supply chain issues at coconut farms (described above under Agriculture and Livelihood) require efficiencies to improve margins and farmer income.
• Migration out of the village continues.

Health and Hygiene:

• Public-health service doctors are in inadequate supply: there are only two that serve Mori.
• Private doctors are available but too expensive for many villagers.
• Additional doctors are not ready to work in the village.
• Registered medical practitioners (non-doctors who serve the area) prescribe shots, some of which are unnecessary.
• There is no drainage or sewer system in the village.
• There are no veterinarians in the village, leaving livestock, such as chicken and buffaloes, untreated, reducing farmer revenue.
• Buses do not run on a fixed schedule, affecting schools and businesses.
• Waiting times at local places, including the health clinic, are long.
• Many households lack toilets; there are only 800 in the village of 8,000         people.

Education:

• There are only two public schools in the area, and private schools are too         expensive for many villagers.
• There are too few teachers.
• There is no instruction for children in grades one through five conducted in         English.
• Students must travel 10 to 20 kilometers to access post-secondary education. School lunch programs are ineffectively implemented

1. Evaluate smart Village co-innovation prototype process. List strengths, weaknesses and possible improvements.

The villagers will be invited to interact with proposed technologies, processes and solutions offered by sponsoring firms and research and educational institutions. Stations will be erected in the co-innovation area located in the village where technologies and solutions will be displayed for interaction with the villagers. The interactions and feedback from villagers will be documented for pivoting the solutions to improve the value to the villagers. Villagers will be invited back 3 times for pivoting

• Providing access
• Emergency for smart village
• Value added

Strengths:

• communication, information,
• tools/technology,
• education and connectivity,
• value by saving time, cost elimination/save,
• new sources of revenue, risk reduction, scalable models, and
• improved happiness index.

Weakness:

• build trust with the villagers
• villager doesn’t have the competent knowledge to judge
• require huge investments
• Expense of implementing prototyping

1. Primary challenges faced by companies participating in the prototyping process:

• poor infrastructure
• communication networks
• Distribution channels and network costs.
• Innovation
• Communication

1. How can companies create shared value that addresses societal needs and creates profit potential?

• Community meetings with cooperative society to understand the state of agricultural situation
• Companies can deliver latest facilities such farming equipment’s at affordable price to improve agricultural activities.
• Come up with a platform (website/app) to connect farmers with their buyers so that there is real-time sharing of information.
• Co-innovation space for product concept testing.
• Companies should merge or create educational institutions to deliver good quality education to the children of villages.

1. What are the limitations to the shared value approach of the 20 non-negotiable outcomes?

• Open-defecation seems to be a norm born out of circumstance.
• Improper hygiene practices.
• Lack of hospitality facilities.
• Migration of people from rural to urban
• child marriage is considered to be a tradition and it is hard to convince villagers, who secretly conduct child marriages.
• Effective implementation of educational and medical schemes has been inadequate and as past experience has indicated, may not be executed properly.

1. How can IBM and Ericson further add value to the shared value approach.

IBM:

• While the sensors monitor the levels, it should be extended to giving models to predict the next move or the corrective approach the farmer should take based on this diagnosis. Based on the composition level, the type of soil, the crop to be cultivated, the weather and humidity level, the sensor can be linked to a software program that analyses the data and gives possible outcomes to the farmer based on the statistics. It can also be linked to the weather predication and give a holistic outcome based on all inputs.

Ericson:

• Farmers may be haphazard in their use of water. There may still exist unequal distribution to all farmers, where some farmers may dominate the others. For this purpose, instead of just an update from one farmer representative of the village, link a daily acceptance reports of farmers of their use of canal water. This can be done via an app. Correlate this with amount of water let out of the canal. This system of checks will lead to encompassing sustainable development.

1. Evaluate the argument that the smart village prototyping process will naturally lead to scalable products and services. Under what circumstances is this argument likely to be true? Under what circumstances might it prove false?

TRUE

• Technology developments that benefits agricultural
• Increasing lifestyle and livelihood of the people.
• The problems of the villagers in Mori are similar to all villages.
• Telecom connectivity, villagers will be more empowerment, and their need and dependence on innovative tech products for improved agricultural benefits will increase.

FALSE

• Change in weather conditions.
• Unskillful labors
• Problems of villagers vary from area to area
• types of crops cultivated, and culture

1. Evaluate the concepts of a social enterprise and a shared-value approach to innovation. To what extent could the tradeoffs necessary in a social enterprise-those between financial and social goals-affect the success of the smart village concept being prototyped in Mori?

• Lack of long term financial performance
• Lack of higher order purchasing behavior of villagers.
• Cost of technology for innovative products, that will have to cover R&D and any patents gained along the way.
• Though there is technology available at an affordable rate, villagers may not be able to purchase all items at one go.
• The price for health and edu-care is imminent and in rural market, this is capped very low.

1. What should Naidu do to address the challenge of motivating partners across the state to emulate the smart village concept being prototyped in Mori?

• Developing the open innovation policies.
• Introducing more awareness programs.
• Efficiently managing the distribution and network system.
• Guaranteed employment, agricultural productivity, medical care and other basic amenities for every villager can be the message of ads on TV, a speech made by the chief minister himself.
• showcasing videos of success stories based on the prototype model and encouraging villagers to reach out for development

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