The Coffee Board, under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, launched a number of mobile phone applications for the benefit of all relevant stakeholders across the sector eco-system. The initiatives were launched by Suresh Prabhu, Minister of Commerce & Industry, Government of India, in the presence of Anup Wadhawan, IAS, Commerce Secretary.
One of the applications launched, by the Commerce Minister, included Coffee Mobile App ‘Coffee Connect’ developed by Coffee Board in association with National Institute for Smart Government(NISG) developed by WINIT.
This application will provide field functionarieswith relevant information using a combination of digitisation technologies like geo-tagging etc. They will have information including plantation details (location etc.) as well as plant material, age, production, Infrastructures, machinery available, etc.
The solution will help in improving the efficiency of the field functionaries, transparency in the activities of the extension officers and in subsidy disbursement and real time report generation.
The “Coffee Krishi Tharanga” will be pilot tested in the Chikmagalur and Hassan districts of Karnataka State covering 30,000 farmers during the first year.