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Case Study: Agriculture

BASIX Krishi Samruddhi Ltd. (BKSL)

SNAPSHOT:
BASIX Krishi provides agriculture-related support and business development services to Indian farmers. The company’s mission is to create and enhance supply chains for mainstream agro-commodities, based on environmentally friendly and socially accepted practices. Since 2010, more than 12,000 farmers have benefitted from BASIX Krishi’s support services. By the end of March 2012, BASIX Krishi seeks to enhance the income-generating opportunities for over 100,000 customers.

The Challenge:
Timely and contextualised information, such as market prices and weather conditions, are a key success factor in agriculture. BASIX Krishi was reaching out to farmers to provide them with this critical information and support, predominately through human field agents. However, these agents were only able to meet with each customer every few weeks, making it a challenge to disseminate timely information and advice. BASIX Krishi thus needed a more efficient method of advisory services in order to deliver the most accurate, up-to-date information to their customers.

Uniphore’s Innovation:
Uniphore integrated our innovative technologies with BASIX Krishi’s knowledge management system to create a mobile advisory system for farmers. BASIX Krishi can send pre-scheduled voice and SMS announcements to their customers, freeing up agents to spend less time on the phone with farmers and more time in the field. When agents visit a farmer in person, the customer acknowledges receipt of the service – using Uniphore’s Voice Biometric to authenticate their voice. Additionally, our Voice Recognition technology allows Basix Krishi to receive and respond to queries from their customers through interactive, guided, and human-like conversations. All of these services work with any low-cost mobile phone, and are available to clients in their local languages. From the backend, Uniphore supports the management of all the exchanged through mobile interactions, and we help BASIX Krishi generate customized reports on this activity.

BKSL The Impact:

  • Increased Efficiency: Since the mobile advisory system takes care of disseminating information and alerts to clients, field agents are able to spend more time on activities that require their physical presence, making them more efficient in responding to farmers.
  • Cost Savings: With increased efficiency of the agents, each agent can be assigned to many more farmers, saving costs in human resources for BASIX Krishi
  • Enhanced Service Delivery: BASIX Krishi is now able to provide information services on a 24/7 basis. This constant stream of information helps farmers to enhance their yield and reduces their risk of crop failure.