Microsoft’s SMS Trial For Maharashtra’s Sugarcane Farmers Not Ready For Commercialisation
By Anupama Chandrasekaran - Sun 21 Oct 2007 06:32 PM PST
It is great to see numerous multinational companies investing in technology-related rural initiatives but looks like many of the experiments will take a long time to be commercially viable.
Here’s an example. In 1998, India invested half a million dollars in a project to connect 40,000 farmers in Maharashtra state via 54 Internet kiosks to access information regarding market prices etc. After seeing that PCs were not being used for the desired purpose, the research team replaced the PCs with a smart phone stored in the main village, that serves as a gateway to accept and transmit data to and from the farmers, who could now check how much sugarcane they have in the warehouse via SMS.
But looks like these efforts too are part of work in progress, according to Rick Rashid, head of Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Research. “We will get to know in the future if they can be commercialised,” Rashid said regarding the project, which is based in Warana in Maharashtra. “As of now, we are focusing on basic research.” [More in the Business Standard]
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