The Telecom subscriber growth has saturated in cities and large towns in India. If you see the latest subscriber growth reports, the numbers are actually falling in Metros and cities. At the same time, the growth of subscribers is picking up in villages and far flung towns.
Indian Telecom Operators are now increasingly concentrating on rural Indians to grow their subscriber base. Bharti Airtel’s latest service offering – Apna Chaupal – has been launched precisely for that reason.
Apna Chaupal is India’s first voice based one stop solution portal that offers value added services that will appeal to rural Indians. Apna Chaupal has been especially designed for rural and semi-urban market and offers mobile customers across the country to easily browse and subscribe from a bouquet of services by dialing a single toll-free number – 58080.
Apna Chaupal services are offered in regional in regional languages and include host of informative services like learning agricultural techniques, receive instant updates on Mandi rates and Government jobs, listen to Live Aarti’s from popular religious shrines, access entertainment services like Hello Tunes, Comedy FM and radio, receive ball-by-ball updates on cricket matches, learn English, seek career counselling!
Apna Chaupal Services Offerings
Our Take on Apna Chaupal
Services like Apna Chaupal have lot of potential in far flung towns and villages in India, due to their lack of connectivity with main stream information centres. Even simple things like getting the latest rates on food grains etc. is sometimes quite difficult for farmers.
With mobiles bringing in the the last mile connectivity to rural Indian’s, services like Apna Chaupal can offer them valuable up-to-date information on key daily life activities along with host of other services.
Another key factor is that Apna Chaupal offers all these services in local languages, allowing the end mobile user to directly get information in a language they are comfortable with.
Prima Facie, Apna Chaupal does cater to the need to rural Indians, however, it will be important for Airtel to deliver appealing content consistently to rural mobile users for them to get hooked on to it.
Would love to hear your views on Apna Chaupal!
