Last month, my colleague Amol Jadhav and I visited the IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited (IKSL) State operations team in Karnataka, India. I’ve worked with the IKSL project for a number of years and I’m always inspired to see the hard work of the IKSL agriculture operations team who manage the “behind the scenes” content process for the IKSL service.

The IKSL service provides critical agriculture information on a daily basis to 3 million farmers in local languages across 18 States. Each day, farmers receive 5 recorded voice messages direct to their mobile phones and can also call and speak to an agri-expert through the helpline.

Shashi Kala is an agriculture specialist with a number of years of agriculture advisory experience; she manages the team in Karnataka who create the content for the outbound messages and answer farmers’ calls through the helpline.

Creating good content is one of the most critical factors for any successful Agri VAS (Agricultural Value Added Service) and ensuring the right information is provided at the right time to farmers is quite a challenge!

I recently spoke with Shashi Kala to find out how IKSL manage their content management process in Karnataka.

What’s the content process for creating the outbound messages for IKSL?

What is the feedback process for the outbound messages and helpline calls?

What are the challenges farmers in Karnataka are facing today and what information are you providing to support them?

What benefits are farmers receiving from using the IKSL service?

Under the mFarmer Initiative, a partnership between the GSMA, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID, we will continue to gather and share best practice on content management. We would love to hear your feedback on how you source, aggregate, format and quality assure content for your agriculture services. Please do get in touch with us to share what you’ve learnt or what is challenging you most.