SHUROKKHA

Shurokkha is WebMD for low-income livestock farmers, giving access to an experienced veterinarian at the touch of a button

Bangladesh is the most densely populated country in the world for both people and cattle, with 160M people and 24M animals squeezed into an area of 170,000 sqkm. The vast majority of smallholder farmers stake their entire livelihood, including family nutrition, on a few heads of cattle. They live in a hand-to-mouth situation with low productivity and unpredictable cashflow. This situation is made worse by the fact that there are only 1000 practicing veterinarians in the country, most whom work for large corporate farms or in cities and do not want to work with farmers in marginalized, hard-to-reach places like coastal areas and “chars” (tiny islands in NW Bangladesh surrounded by rivers).  As a result, farmers served by self-taught ‘para-veterinarians’ who do not hold formal qualifications and provide a sub-par service based mostly on hearsay. If there are any catastrophic illnesses that befall their cattle, farmers stand to lose everything.

To address this gap between qualified vets and farmers, we developed a digital service called Shurokkha.  We use our own trained para-vets to collect a cattle’s health information, take photos of the cattle and transmit it via an app to the a veterinarian in the head office who reviews the case and sends back a digital prescription. Shurokkha can also be used to capture changes in the health, production and rearing management of a cattle with photographs, providing animal husbandry advice to the farmer for cattle health management and sending alerts based on imminent threats or disease outbreaks.  Using our data, we can integrate with the systems used by animal health product companies and government to track diseases, production levels and demand for certain inputs in an area.

Shurokkha provides veterinarians at a fingertip for marginalized farmers, with the intent to ensure food and financial security to those who toil away not just in Bangladesh around the world.

There has never been a mobile-app, combined with a service delivery and revenue model, for marginalized farmers to obtain veterinary advice. Under this solution:

- Farmers avail low-cost expert opinion during critical livestock situations and avoid unnecessarily expensive treatment, and increase income from lower costs & higher productivity

- Para-vets earn additional incomes by serving as a hub for expert consultation

- Unemployed youth have the opportunity to become Shurokkha branded para-vets and become micro-entrepreneurs

At the heart of Shurokkha is the idea of using mobile application and internet technology for mitigating the gap of physical resources for the benefit of smallholder farmers. Technology makes it possible to provide otherwise unavailable professional veterinarian service to farmers at an affordable cost. Technology also makes it possible for a professional veterinarian to provide service to threefold number of farmers. It is technology that makes the solution scalable with marginal cost.  

In recent years number of livestock farmers & dependency on livestock farming have grown significantly in southern coastal regions of Bangladesh due to frequent higher tidal waves causing greater cultivable areas going under sea water. As well as increased salinity resulting high insecurity of crop productivity. Farmers level veterinary services are almost non-existent compared to the number of livestock farmers. Within next 12 months we like to deploy Shurokkha in these areas where farmers badly need services and bring positive change in their livelihood also find the right business model for coastal regions which is scalable

In next 5 years we aim to have 100,000 smallholder farmers subscribed to Shurokkha service through 500 Para-vets. We expect that users of our service will experience improvement in their livestock health by 30% and increase in milk production by 50%. We also aim to reduce communicable diseases in livestock in areas of our operation by 75% because of our disease alert and good husbandry practices. We expect that there will be reduction in cattle and calf mortality by 1% and 3% respectively.

We attract para-vets to our service through rural marketing efforts undertaken by our field agents. In-app e-Learning modules on animal husbandry, basic livestock disease diagnosis, treatment makes para-vets routine engagement with Shurokkha. We also use various promotional materials in the field and enlist para-vets for peer-to-peer learning under the brand of Shurokkha.

Through our field agents, we undertake promotional activities for farmers to make them aware about Shurokkha so that there is an added incentive for para-vets to subscribe to Shurokkha. We organize vaccination camps, and provide demonstrations of cattle management SMS notification (e.g. disease alerts) to farmers.

Since 2012 Shurokka has served 10,000+ farmers through 50+ para-vets. This was a B2B model through donors like USAID, which allowed us to use funds to test and continually reiterate the product. We now want to become a B2C service directly reaching farmers.

We know the service works, based on M&E data like:

- Complete recovery rate among cattle sickness cases - 89 percent

- Satisfaction among farmers - 94 percent

- 62% farmers have taken the service multiple times

- 80% of the cattle improved health and production (milk/meat)

- Subscribed Para-vets increased monthly average income by 60 percent

Our target for next 12 months is to serve 6000 farmers through a B2C model. In 3 years’ time would like to scale Shurokkha to 30,000 farmers. For first 12 months we will target 3 most remote upazilas (sub-districts) of coastal regions where concentration of cattle is higher, recruit & train 3 field officers one for each upazilas who will onboard farmers and Para-vets. Uptake of the services will be rapid after few initial successful cases. On the other hand we have 1 expert vet at our head office for service delivery will hire 2 more.

For proper and effective field implementation of SHUROKKHA, mPower Social Enterprises already possesses the following -

1.    Multidisciplinary Team ( Software, Project Management, Business and Domain Experts including graduates of Harvard and MIT) with 10+ years of experience in the field of ICT based agricultural and specially livestock solutions

2.    Our pilot phase with NGOs has already created and forged good relationship and understanding with Para-vets & community in the intervention areas.

3.    Partnership with local NGOs to assist in mobilizing community & local resources

Partnership with government departments like Rural Development Academy (RDA) and Department of Livestock Services (DLS)

SHUROKKHA is run through a for-profit social enterprise model and hence sustainability and cost effectiveness will be as integral to the operations as well as the quality of service. Para-vets charge the farmers BDT 100 for each prescription treatment and BDT 50 for animal husbandry advices delivered by veterinarian through SHUROKKHA. Local farmers are used to paying to the para-vets for their service but the fee is highly variable. In the case of SHUROKKHA, the farmers are paying a fixed charges for the remote veterinarian’s service. This charge is much lower compared to the charge of a veterinarian attending the case physically and will be paid to the para-vets. Para-vet pays 50% of the collected fee to Shurokkha through mobile money transfer. Rest 50% para-vet keeps as his remuneration. At optimal capacity a veterinarian can deliver around 30 prescriptions per day and the earnings from that will be good enough to cover all the operational expenses like salary, overhead, and promotional events.

We know that the service works quite well for livestock farmers and they like using it, though we can always improve the design and add new features. In addition to that, we are looking for mentors to refine our business model, pricing strategy, impact framework, marketing plan and fundraising approach with impact investors, as well as potential tie-ups with partners around the world who can use our technology in their own livestock projects. We believe Solve and its network can help us with all of these needs.

Developing an information service for the bottom-of-the-pyramid is never easy, as smallholder farmers are price-sensitive and cannot always take a long-term view towards investing in their assets when they live hand-to-mouth.  This makes developing a model beyond serving NGOs difficult, but not impossible. Our data suggests that there is a willingness-to-pay for consultations and services via Shurokka. We are technical, design and agro specialists - we would love Solve’s help to get mentorship in business model development.