Nokia Life Tools: 17M Subscribers, Adding New Agri, Education Services

Nokia is all set to expand its Life Tool Services in the Indian market, offering information related to horticulture, dairy farming and fisheries; The Hindu had reported last week. Nokia Life Tools, which started three years ago as a pilot project in Maharashtra, is now available all over India in local Indian languages with region specific content. We spoke with BV Natesh, Head (Emerging Market Services) Nokia India, about the new offerings and on the adoption of the Life Tools service.

New Services & Content Processing

- Agriculture Pack: Services like information on horticulture, dairy farming and fisheries to Life Tool Services will be introduced progressively over the next 6-9 months. These will be available all across India, as part of the Life Tools Agriculture Premium Pack, and will be priced at Rs 60 per month, Natesh said. Nokia has a dedicated agriculture knowledge desk of 20 people in Bangalore, who aggregate data from various sources, and processes and translate it, for delivery through Life Tools.

"We get weather data from the MET department, local mandi prices, and other information via various media, including the internet and facsimile , which is collated and translated by our knowledge desks, we also have local experts since a lot of information is hyper-local. For example a person living in the hills will not require the same amount of Iodine as a a person living in the coastal regions. Of course, experts at the health desk are medical professionals," says Natesh.

- IGNOU: Natesh informed MediaNama that Nokia will also start piloting IGNOU's English certification course on Life Tools in Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, starting this month; depending on the user feedback, the program will be launched pan-India by December. The IGNOU service will include learning and assessment modules, and more courses will be added to the service, depending on feedback.

Content Partners

Nokia has developed a range of partners across private and public enterprises, including local Government departments, NGOs and development agencies, particularly since Life Tools cover a wide range of content, and the company needs to develop and entire ecosystem for content sourcing and delivery. Nokia has around 25 partners for agriculture and health services.

- Private Sector Partners: include entities like Syngenta, ITC eChoupal, Coromandel International, EnableM & Pearson;
- Public Sector Partners: include Government agencies such as Maharashtra State Agri Marketing Board (MSAMB), various state agencies, Rubber and Spices Boards and NGO's such as National Agro Foundation; Kid and Parent and Arogya for Health.

Pricing

Nokia Life Tools Agriculture service is available across 18 states, in 11 regional languages including Hindi, Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Oriya and English, on over 20 devices. The basic plan at Rs 30 per month, offers daily weather updates and relevant agriculture-related news, advice and tips.

The premium plan at Rs 60 per month, provides the closest market prices for three crops chosen by the subscriber, as well as weather information, news, advice and tips. The Education service is available across India, and consumers can subscribe to their preferred educational service such as Learn English, General Knowledge or Exam Tips for Rs 30 per month. Health services are also priced at Rs 30/ month.

According to Natesh, the pricing was determined after analyzing user behavior, sources of information and the costs they incur to access them, and also based on the spending patterns of prepaid customers. The pricing comes around to Rs.1-Rs.2 per day, close to the price of a newspaper.

Usage Patterns

Although Natesh did not disclose the number of new customer additions every month, he said that the service has close to 17 million subscribers since it's initial launch. Usage is consistent across geographies, and a large chunk of subscribers have more than one pack activated on their phones. The bread winner in the family uses the phone during the day time, and other members of the family using it later. The service is pre-embedded in around 20 handsets, included in the main menu of the phone, and there's a shortcut key, as well.

Will Nokia Life Tools Ever Launch On Other Phones?

Nokia does not intend to bring Life Tools to other phones or even as a telecom operator service; according to the company, Life Tools require localized language packs which are built into Nokia phones. Also, the company has no plans to make Life Tools available for download on the Nokia (Ovi) Store, though it might use GPRS as a bearer for delivering content in place of SMS, when mobile data becomes more reliable, and mainly for semi-urban use cases, in the future.

Nokia strengthens Life Tool services via SMS in India

People in agriculture, healthcare and education fields to benefit

Further increasing its engagement with the Indian market, Nokia is now focussing on strengthening its utility services called Life Tools that provide information to users on agriculture, healthcare and education. With a "knowledge desk" well set at its Bangalore R&D centre, the Finnish mobile phone manufacturer is planning to add more utility services to help and empower various communities, particularly farmers.

"Nokia Life Tools began as a pilot project three years ago and now it is a potent and successful information tool for Nokia phone users, making a positive impact on the lives of people — be it farmers, women or students. We already have 1.7 crore users of this service…with mobile penetration increasing fast, particularly in rural and semi-urban areas, we hope to connect 70 per cent of Indians through Life Tools," Nokia India Head (Emerging Markets Services) B. V. Natesh told this correspondent.

"We started with providing information to farmers in Maharashtra on topics related to sowing and care of crops, weather forecast and prices in the local wholesale market. Now this service is available pan-India, with information available in local languages with local contents.

"We have a team of dedicated agriculture professionals doing research and providing information, besides 26 specific partnerships for in-depth knowledge. We now plan to provide information related to horticulture, dairy farming and fisheries to add to the income of Indian farmers," Mr. Natesh said.

Two other major services being offered under Nokia Service Tools are related to education and healthcare. "We started healthcare service three months ago focussing mainly on lifestyle management and diseases that Indians are more prone to, like diabetes, heart ailments and respiratory problems. We are also providing information to women that are related to pregnancy and child care. All the information being given is purely preventive in nature and not diagnostic…we have got tremendous response," he said.

Referring to special focus of Nokia Life Tools on education, Mr. Natesh said besides giving lessons on general knowledge and English, they had tied up with the Indira Gandhi National Open University for their English certificate course, where Nokia would provide study reinforcement module on its Life Tools platform for students enrolling in the course.

TALKS WITH IGNOU

"We are in talks with IGNOU to introduce such modules for their other regular courses too," he added.

Giving details about how the Life Tools service works, Mr. Natesh said it comes pre-loaded with almost all Nokia handsets, starting at Rs.1,200.

"A user just needs to pay Rs.30 per month for each service and he gets all useful information through SMS. We also provide need-based service where Rs.3 is charged per SMS,'' Mr. Natesh added.

Keywords: Nokia, Life Tools, agriculture, healthcare and education

An SMS in Time Saves Farmers the Monsoon Blues

Mobile-based advisory services Iffco Kisan Sanchar, Nokia Life Tools and Reuters Market Light help farmers take the right decisions and avoid crop losses

  Atul Bharve, a farmer from Maharashtra's Marathwada district, says a mobile phone message saved him from crop losses this year. When monsoon was delayed, he sent an SMS to Nokia Life Tools — a text message-based information service — seeking advice on what to cultivate and was promptly advised to focus on fodder. "When the rains didn't arrive in early June, I panicked. But that crucial SMS from Nokia was a lifeline of sorts for my family," says Bharve. 

Kapil Mehta, a traditional paddy farmer from Sabakantha district in northern Gujarat, took up sorghum cultivation, which requires less water, this season in line with a voice message advisory from Iffco Kisan Sanchar, a joint venture between mobile carrier Bharti Airtel and fertiliser firm Iffco. 
If India avoids a farming disaster of huge crop losses due to deficient monsoon rains this year, part of its credit goes to specialised mobile-based advisory services such as Iffco Kisan Sanchar, Nokia Life Tools and Reuters Market Light, which are helping millions of farmers across the country take the right decisions. 
"Our database confirms that nearly 12 lakh farmers are listening to our voice messages everyday...many are monsoonrelated," says S Srinivasan, CEO of Iffco Kisan Sanchar. 
Finnish mobile handset maker Nokia says nearly 30 million customers subscribe to its Nokia Life Tools service and many of them are farmers. Reuters Market Light, an initiative of news and information firm Thomson Reuters to provide personalised agricultural information through text messages in local languages to farmers for . 999 a year, boasts of one million unique subscribers. 
These service providers are now working overtime to respond to a deluge in demand due to delayed monsoon. And their volumes are unlikely to flag any time soon as the Met office has predicted a 15-20% shortfall in rains in early August. "Many farmers in Maharashtra have opted for these services and have benefited," says Umakant Nangat, Maharashtra's commissioner of agriculture. Experts believe mobile-based farmer advisory providers will play an increasingly larger role in coming years. 
Swapan Kumar Dutta, deputy director general (crop science) of Indian Council of Agricultural Research, says these service providers can create alerts about crops that require less water if they get a wind of the monsoon pattern in advance. "It's easier for them to play a larger role as they are in direct touch with rural subscribers. Service providers also need to collaborate more with agri-scientists," he says. 
Companies say they are already at it. 
Iffco Kisan Sanchar, which has 13 Kisan Call Centres in different parts of the country, has thrashed out contingency plans in consultation with the state Agriculture Department & Research Organisation to assist farmers impacted by the delayed monsoon. "We've urged our subscribers to adopt moisture conservation practices and explore ways to improve water utilisation," CEO Srinivasan says. BV Natesh, director (emerging markets services) at Nokia Life Tools, says, "Since the Indian farmer now faces significant monsoon-related challenges, we've been providing our subscribers with the best practices and tips on water and soil moisture conservation, alternative crop selection in low rainfall scenarios and five-day weather forecasts." 
Nokia Life provides personalised text messages on 270 commodities in 12 languages across 22 states in 12 languages and can be accessed by farmers on a daily basis. Reuters Market Light Managing Director Amit Mehra says, "Our experts have developed contingency plans at state and district levels by sourcing inputs from leading agri-research institutions." Experts say that these service providers can coach farmers on drought-resistant seed variants besides issuing customised advisories on shifting crop patterns in rainfall deficit zones. But they also need superior infrastructure to source and disseminate accurate farming tips down to the taluka level. Mohini Mohan Misra, national secretary of leading farmers organisation Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, says, "The services offered by Nokia Life Tools and IKSL can be helpful amid the ongoing rainfall deficit. But they must beef up infrastructure to source more accurate information on 127 agro-climatic zones." 
A recent World Bank report notes that mobile-based access to price information has improved an average farmer's income by up to 24%. It adds that the most common usage of text messaging in the context of agriculture includes access to price information, crop disease and meteorological information. 
sutanuka.ghosal@timesgroup.com 

PERSONAL TOUCH: Providing agri information through SMSes in local languages