India faces complex agricultural issues which the government is attempting to address, but brands can also play a role by tapping into the mobile and app-based “agritech” revolution that is helping transform each stage of the agriculture value chain.

Writing exclusively for WARC, Amandeep Singh, Business Director at VMLY&R India, explains that any brand looking to build a presence in rural India needs to understand the issues faced by its communities.

Align your brand purpose to overcome these challenges, he advises. (For more details, read the full article: How brands can empower India’s farming communities.)

Doing this “will help embed your brand into the market, creating relevance and value to help your brand resonate with the market via commitment to the common good.”

And as rural India transitions towards digital – digital adoption has grown by 35% in the last year alone and is expected to reach 290 million by the end of 2019 – those brands that can capitalise on these trends will have the biggest impact, he says.

“From overcoming dispersed consumers via social media and mobile-centric campaigns, to thoughtfully mitigating widespread illiteracy via the use of visual imagery, video and NLP, it will be those brands who transform their approach in line with the market who reap the biggest rewards,” Singh believes.

Financial services company Jai Kisan, for example, has built a platform to empower the growth of rural Indians, especially farmers (only one out of eight agriculture households in India can avail themselves of formal credit).

It helps farmers to understand their financial status “through a next-generation hyper-localized agriculture credit score, digitizing their finances and farm capabilities for financial institutions,” Singh explains. “Via the platform, farmers can access sustainable financing seamlessly without waiting in line at a bank.”

A focus on data-driven models that use machine-learning techniques can provide opportunities for sophisticated marketing and communication with India’s multifarious rural communities, which vary by crops, cultures, languages, religions, levels of education and modernization.

Amandeep Singh’s article is part of a Spotlight series on rural marketing in India. Read more.

Sourced from WARC