ITC to sell gas via e-choupals

ITC is tying up with Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) to sell cooking
gas through its e-choupal net-work in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Both ITC
and BPCL officials confirmed the development and a formal announcement to this
effect would be made soon.

"We are expanding the pro-duct range available on the e-choupal network
and lique-fied petroleum gas is one of them," an ITC official said.

The rural market has be-come the new battleground for LPG players with urban
areas witnessing near-saturation and BPCL would use the tie-up to expand its
rural reach. "There is a strong sales growth from rural and semi-urban
areas with consumer preference shifting from fuels such as wood, coal and
kerosene to LPG," an industry expert said.

Companies have faced pro-blems in marketing LPG to households scattered in
far-flung areas. As parallel trading centers attracting the affluent rural
citizen, e-choupals pro-vide ideal reach and excellent connectivity to interior
loca-tions, sources said.

The ITC’s e-choupal Inter-net backbone will permit good inventory and
customer relationship management. ITC has been adding on four-five new e-choupals
daily, aim-ing to cover more than two-thirds of the rural population in the
country with focus on select commodities in specific states.

The e-choupal network is expected to touch 4,100 insta-llations by March
2004, reach-ing out to two million farmers in close to 18,000 villages in the
states of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karna-taka, Rajasthan and
Andhra Pradesh.

Pilot-runs in respect of vari-ous rural marketing initiatives were under way
and business models were being fine-tuned prior to scaling up.

(CyberMedia News)