In the joint venture IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Ltd IFFCO will have the majority 50 per cent stake while Airtel and Star Global will have 25 per cent equity each. Bharti Airtel has created the platform to offer free daily voice updates on mandi prices, farming techniques, weather forecast and fertiliser availability to the farmers.

After announcing the joint venture Bharti Group chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said Airtel would become the top rural telecom brand in 2-3 years and the joint venture will harness the power of telecom to add value to the farm sector. Incidentally, Airtel has already enrolled over 48,000 farmers under this scheme.

Mittal said: “About 40 per cent of our customers now come from rural areas. By 2010, the rural population is likely to touch 800 million and two-third of those will be prospective mobile users.”

“We feel there is a great opportunity in telecom sector going to rural India to create new businesses for the cooperatives where farmers are the key stakeholders,” IFFCO managing director U.S Awasthi said.

IKSL managing director Rakesh Kapur said the value added platform ‘Sanchar Hat’ would be launched this month in Gujarat while next roll out would be in Madhya Pradesh, Chhatisgarh and Maharashtra. At present, it is available in Punjab, Harayna, Rajasthan, UP, Tamil Nadu and Bihar, he said, adding by the end of this fiscal, the scheme would cover the whole country.