Reliance, Web 18 join hands to ‘empower’ farmers

With the launch of Live Mandi Prices on Reliance phones, farmers can access commodity prices on a real-time basis

It’s time for farmers to get empowered with mobile operators now betting on rural India as their next big revenue stream. The latest offering targeted at rural India is Reliance Communications’ Live Commodity Quotes on Reliance Mobile World. In a tie-up with commoditiescontrol.com, a Web18 portal, the service will provide real-time information on commodities, including spot and future prices.

Under this service, a Reliance Mobile phone user can check the prices of various commodities – from castor seed to metals, onions to crude and natural gas – on a real-time basis as reported by a commodity exchange. The data on commodities will be powered by commoditiescontrol.com. Apart from the price quotes, farmers can access expert guidance on telephone. The information on commodities is available under the ‘Finance’ Section of R World, but farmers have to pay Rs 3 every time they check prices or use the service.

This is not the first time that Reliance Communication has ventured into providing commodity related information to farmers. In 2004, Reliance had tied up with NCDEX and MCX to provide commodity related information on Reliance World. In fact, other operators are also offering a similar service – Airtel has a tie-up with Reuters to offer commodity related information, and Vodafone Essar has a voice response system to provide commodity price information to farmers in Western UP.

Commoditiescontrol.com, a commodity news and information based portal, already provides options to its users to get information on various commodities through SMS via short code 2622. “Although commoditiescontrol.com doesn’t have a tie-up with any other mobile operator to provide commodity related data, it is open for future tie-ups with other operators as well,” says Surya Mantha, CEO, Web 18.

The company is also experimenting with voice response based systems to provide commodity related information to users. However, Mantha wasn’t ready to share information on how revenues will be split between Web 18 and Reliance Communications.