Yes we have launched it. But it is only a prototype. Not a final product.
FarmerNet is only a Prototype at this stage. But we notice different emerging trends. People getting excited are ICT4D activists, Researchers and Donors, not the actual target community; rural farmer and small trader.
In a recent presentation at CABI Global Summit, London, about Fusion’s learning curve from Agri-clinics to FarmerNet, we could successfully capture our true feelings in one single photograph & a quote;
empowering small farmers
“He is our target group, he is innocent and poor, yet smiling and optimistic. We learn a lot from him and we strive to empower him. But we sincerely dont know, whether we are doing the justice to him, as yet” (Quoted by MD, Fusion).
Seeing the mixed response we receive at ground level, we recognize what a long journey that we have to go. Everybody like this. But they dont know how to use it for their benefit.So many factors are contributing to this ‘Dont Know’.
Hence at this stage we are pooling our internal tacit resources of 50 year long sarvodaya staff to refine our understanding into this small farmer – our key target customer. It may be Customer orientation and Segmentation in business jargon. To us, it is about learning, feeling, smelling and tasting his taste, so that we may be able to find complex barriers sitting between him / her, the small mobile gadget sitting in their own palm, and their decision to learn to push the appropriate buttons, in required sequence to upload the rest of the world about their desire! (I have 500kg of Wattakka @ the price of 50Rs/kg. Are you interested?)
