KARACHI ( TARIQ REPORT )
Pakistan’s leading telecomand digital services provider, Telenor Pakistan has won the annualP@SHA ICT Award 2016 in “Innovation in Service” category. The award is a recognition of Telenor’s ground-breaking mobile agricultural service ’Khushaal Zameendar’.
‘Khushaal Zameendar’ isTelenor Pakistan’s public service for small scale farmers in Punjab province and part of its m-agriculture initiatives. Telenor users can subscribe to the service free of cost by simply dialing 7272 and receive two alerts on daily basis – a morning weather forecast and farming tip for their preferred crop and an evening alert regarding livestock management advisory. Subscribers can choose to receive the alerts through SMS or OBDs, while also having access to an IVR – 7272 where they can listen to localizedand informative content regarding multiple crops. Basically conceived to help small farmers, the IVR content has been stylized to replicate regional language conversations in a typical Pakistani rural household in three languages including Urdu, Punjabi and Saraiki, and help them keep tabs on a number of topics related to agriculture, nutrition and livestock.
Commenting on the achievement, Irfan Wahab Khan, CEO Telenor Pakistan, said, “mAgri is one of Telenor Pakistan’s priority areas as the agriculture and farming sector contributes significantly to the country’s economy and enhancing the sector with digital technology will have far fetching results. Today, we are humbled to be the favorite digital lifestyle partner of over 900,000 farmers in Punjab and counting.” “The P@SHA ICTAward for ‘Khushaal Zamindar’ is a prestigious achievement and we are thankful to P@SHA for recognizing our efforts to empower Pakistani societies through accessible and relevant digital solutions,” he added.
Telenor Pakistan’s m-agriculture initiatives are part of its ambition to enhance digital and financial inclusion in the country. Telenor Pakistan is building a digital ecosystem to provide cost-effective and ground breaking digital and technological solutions to instill ease, access, efficacy, and productivty to various fields of life including the agriculture sector of Pakistan.