Rural India's e-Governance wing targets FMCG sales of Rs 100 crore

The federal e-Governance initiative for rural India – Common Service Centres (CSCs) – is aiming to achieve fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sales worth Rs 100 crore in the current 2019-20 fiscal.

This would be a ten-fold growth over the last financial year, when CSCs had logged total sales worth Rs 10 crore.

“Apart from consumer goods, CSC outlets also sell agro products such as fertilisers and seeds in rural areas,” CSC e-Gov Services India CEO, Dinesh Kumar Tyagi, told Business Standard in Lucknow today.

He said apart from offering FMCG and consumer goods, the CSCs were also providing utility services such as payment of electricity bills. “Last month, the centres had collected UP power bills worth Rs 550 crore.”

CSC is a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) of the Union Ministry for Electronics & Information Technology under the aegis of the Centre’s Digital India programme. They are modeled as front-end outlets for the delivery of various Government-to-Citizen (G2C) and other Business-to-Citizen (B2C) services.

These are managed and operated by local skilled entrepreneurs known as village level entreprenuers (VLE), which currently number almost 400,000 pan India. It now has presence in almost all the villages and panchayats across the country.

So far, CSC has inked agreements with some leading FMCG companies viz. Patanjali, ITC, HP, Godrej, Samsung, iBall, IFFCO, KRIBHCO, Rita Machines etc. Besides, it has also firmed up alliances with several public and private sector banks to offer a bouquet of financial products in the rural areas.

Meanwhile, public sector HDFC Bank today rolled out its festive season offers, including discounts and easy loan facilities in rural pockets in partnership with CSC, under which consumers can avail of special festive offers available across the spectrum of financial solutions.

HDFC Bank country head (branch banking) Arvind Vohra said the Bank had tied up with over 1,000 retail brands for discounts, cashbacks and extra reward points on both in-store and on-line purchases. Leading retail and consumer brands like Reliance Digital, Samsung, Vijay Sales and Big Basket would offer up to 10% off on various products and services, he informed.

This is the 2nd phase of HDFC Bank’s ‘Festive Treats’ campaign, which was first launched in Mumbai on September 30. However, the rural leg of the campaign was launched in Lucknow this afternoon.

The partnership with CSC has facilitated the reach to most remotest parts of the country with VLEs acting just like Bank branches, HDFC Bank country head (Government and Institutional Business, E-Commerce and Start-ups) Smita Bhagat said.

Apart from VLE network, HDFC Bank’s 5,000+ branches will also be tranformed into financial supermarkets, where customers can walk in and speak to staff on queries and avail of the offers. In addition, customers can avail of offers from digital platforms viz. PayZapp and SmartBuy.