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 ITC initiated the e-choupal initiative to help the Indian farmers hitherto tied down by factors such as low investment, weak market orientation and low risk taking ability to break away from these shackles. The e-Choupals serve as both a social gathering place for exchange of information (choupal means gathering place in Hindi) and an e-commerce hub.
How it works?
A computer, typically housed in the farmer’s house, is linked to the Internet and serves an average of 600 farmers in 10 surrounding villages within about a five kilometer radius.
A farmer, called a sanchalak, is chosen to supervise the use of the computer and is obligated by a public oath to serve the entire community.
The farmers can use the computer to access daily closing prices on local mandis, as well as to track global price trends or find information about new farming techniques—either directly or, because many farmers are illiterate, via the sanchalak.
They also use the e-Choupal to order seed, fertilizer, and other products such as consumer goods from ITC or its partners, at prices lower than those available from village traders; the sanchalak typically aggregates the village demand for these products and transmits the order to an ITC representative.
At harvest time, ITC offers to buy the crop directly from any farmer at the previous day’s closing price; the farmer then transports his crop to an ITC processing center, where the crop is weighed electronically and assessed for quality. The farmer is then paid for the crop and a transport fee.
How it has benefited everybody?
The e-Choupal system has helped to alleviate rural isolation, improve, productivity and enhance the income of the farmers.Farmers benefit from more accurate weighing, faster processing time, and prompt payment, and from access to a wide range of information, including accurate market price knowledge, and market trends, which help them decide when, where, and at what price to sell.
The e-Choupal initiative has helped provide you with superior products as we are able to source the very best grains directly from the farmers.
What began as an effort to re-engineer the procurement process for soy, wheat, and other cropping systems in rural India is also creating a highly profitable distribution and product design channel for the company—an e-commerce platform that is also a low-cost fulfillment system focused on the needs of rural India.
 The Growth and Future
Launched in June 2000, 'e-Choupal', has already become the largest initiative among all Internet-based interventions in rural India. 'e-Choupal' services today reach out to more than 3.5 million farmers growing a range of crops - soyabean, coffee, wheat, rice, pulses, - in over 31,000 villages through 5200 kiosks across six states (Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan).
 This enthusiastic response from farmers has encouraged ITC to plan for the extension of the ‘e-Choupal’ initiative to altogether 15 states across India over the next few years. On the anvil are plans to channelise other services related to micro-credit, health and education through the same 'e-Choupal' infrastructure.
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