SHUROKKHA - Tele-consultation with vets for livestock health

Livestock farming in Bangladesh plays a critical role in the livelihood of low-income rural population. Yet this remains a low productive sector. One of the key factors contributing to this scenario is the inadequacy of professional practicing veterinarians in rural areas. Professional veterinary services remain expensive and inaccessible to the rural smallholder livestock farmers.

To fill this critical gap, local para-vets (with limited knowledge and often no formal training) provides door-to-door veterinary services to the farmers sometimes leading to inaccurate diagnosis and prescriptions.

Shurokkha mobile application brings veterinary service at the fingertips of marginalized farmers and enables them to get on-demand service from trained veterinarians through para-vets at a fraction of the cost and time compared to physical visit by a veterinarian. Thus, our solution improves the productivity and profitability of livestock farming to ensure food and financial security to marginalized farmers in rural Bangladesh.

Inadequate professional veterinary services at rural areas: In our surveys, we found that only 3% of the farmers have ever taken service from a professional veterinarian. Diving deep we have found that an estimated 1,000 registered veterinarians are practicing for an estimated 25.7 million cattle owned by 10 million farmers - a staggering ratio.

Reliance on suboptimal services from rural para-vets with little knowledge and no formal training: Rural farmers cannot but rely on local para-vets having no formal training and the risks of maltreatment is quite high, according to several studies. In best cases, they give unnecessary drugs leading to high expense of treatment and and in worst cases, the livestock can die due to wrong treatment.

Lack of updated husbandry or farming knowledge among farmers: This makes a big difference in profitability. For example farmers often soil the hoof of the cattle when infected with Foot and Mouth Disease, which worsens the disease. Similarly, little knowledge on the quality and right quantity of feeding of animals also causes poor productivity.

No record keeping of treatment information: Lack of record keeping of treatment information for livestock makes their owners more vulnerable to potential exploitation and malpractice.

Livestock Farmers: The primary beneficiaries of Shurokkha application are rural smallholder livestock farmers. Our solution enables them to avail quality veterinary services to increase their income from lower healthcare costs and higher productivity.

Para-vets: Shurokkha leverages rural para-vets as intermediaries to reach our primary customer base. Thus, para-vets can increase their earnings by serving livestock farmers in a timely and efficient manner with assistance from professional veterinarians. They can also develop their skills by accessing the latest body of knowledge in veterinary.

Rural Youths: Rural youths can resort to Shurokkha as an opportunity to train themselves as para-vets and be a micro-entrepreneur to sell services and inputs required for livestock farming with support from Shurokhha. 

During our business proof of concept stage, we conducted several studies to identify and prioritize the challenges to rural farmers in rearing livestock. Access to professional veterinarians in a cost-effective manner came across as a key need from the farmers and para-vets. Then, over the last 3 years, we took the Human-Centered-Design approach to work with numerous farmers, para-vets and veterinarians from across Bangladesh, to fine-tune the questions in the Shurokkha smartphone application, and design the user interface of the veterinarians' web interface.

Shurokkha provides a bundle of services for the management of livestock health as follows:

(i) Expert consultation remotely from veterinary experts in response to cattle health and husbandry-related queries at a fraction of the cost involved in on-site veterinary consultation

(ii) Regular animal husbandry advisory over SMS and Voice SMS

(iii) Record keeping of cattle including artificial insemination, vaccination, deworming etc. so that timely triggers for action can be generated 

(iv) Customer-relationship-management (CRM) system for Para-veterinarians, which has records of livestock of individual farmers they serve, with automated individualized triggers for action such as vaccination, deworming, and artificial insemination etc.  

(v) Capacity building of Para-vets through interactive e-learning modules

For these services, farmers are enrolled using their mobile phone numbers. The expert consultation service is enabled through an internet-enabled smartphone app operated by farmers themselves, or their family members/ neighbors with smartphone usage literacy or through para-vets who act as intermediaries between a farmer and a remote professional veterinarian. These para-vets  can be called by the farmers on-demand for the treatment of their livestock. The para-vets also visit the farmers' households from time to time for routine check-up and update the information regarding the livestock of their respective customer base. 

For treatment, a para-vet enters the details of livestock symptoms and takes photographs which are sent via the internet to professional veterinarians located in urban cities. These veterinarians can then view the livestock information in web view and talks to the farmer over phone to conduct a remote diagnosis. Then they prescribe treatment and referral advice to the para-vets. After receiving the prescription in their smartphone app as notification, the para-vets then apply the prescription or counsel the farmer depending on the type of prescription. In parallel, concerned farmers also receive a short version of the prescription in SMS.

Fig 1: Service Delivery Process

Same smartphone-based Shurokkha application also has an offline Customer Relationship Management (CRM) module for Para-vets to better manage their service delivery. Using the Shurokkha app, para-vets conduct household visits and register farmers and their cattle into Shurokkha's database. Para-vets then begin to conduct routine visits to capture the changes in health, production etc. of each cattle.

The system also has easy to use e-Learning modules for the existing and would be para-vets for skill development and acquiring knowledge on livestock health and management. 

The Shurokkha solution is unique compared to existing solutions since there has never been such a mobile application available in Bangladesh for marginalized farmers to obtain veterinary advice. Inclusion of para-vets as intermediaries is also a unique aspect in our service delivery model. Since most of our target livestock farmers have already been accustomed to the rural para-vets, presence of these para-vets as intermediaries help the remote veterinarians collecting necessary information for diagnosis and disseminate prescription to the farmers more efficiently and effectively. The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) module supports the para-vets to take informed decision and follow-ups and manage relationships with farmers in a pro-active manner, since the CRM automatically triggers information about which cattle needs intervention (such as vaccination, de-worming etc.) and when. This is a particularly useful solution for para-vets since each para-vet has provides services to more than 1500 cattle on an average. The interactive and gamified contents of Shurokkha's e-Learning module also make a big difference in comparison to other traditional contents e.g. monologue how-to-videos. There are a few hotlines which receive agricultural queries (not limited to only livestock)) over the phone from farmers. But voice hotlines have inherent communication and translation gaps since there is no scope for sending detailed health status including photographs of the livestock, which is critical for an expert to give proper diagnosis. Our solution also solves this issue in an innovative way.

As the local para-vets recruited by Shurokkha can consult trained veterinarians, share necessary information to carry out diagnosis and receive prescriptions using our ICT platform, expert veterinarian consultation has become accessible to rural farmers at a marginal cost. This ensures better health and productivity of the farmers’ cattle, reduce the treatment cost significantly and increases the income and nutritional status of their families. We have confidence that remote consultation by veterinarians works since we have been providing this service for the past 3-4 years, and have already provided the service to more than 20,000 farmers, with multiple organizational clients in the government and NGO sectors, which have subscribed to our service on behalf of the farmers that they serve. We have also had independent studies conducted by University of Illionois, Urbana Champaign and local Bangladesh-based universities. According to a recent customer survey, 95% of the farmers are satisfied with Shurokkha services since 83% of the sick cattle received our treatment services were cured within 2 weeks of service delivery. Following expert guidelines, farmers enjoyed 30% improvement of the cattle health and 40% increase in milk production. After joining Shuokkha, para-vets are also getting more customers, which is attracting many unemployed youths start working as our paravets. Our existing para-vets affirmed that the number of calls they receive has been increased by 50-60%. Thus, Shurokkha is ultimately contributing to improved food security, decent work and economic growth for rural marginalized population in Bangladesh. 

Fig 2: Theory of Change for Shurokkha Solution

The current number of people we’re serving: 20,000+ Livestock Farmers and 108 para-vets (As on 31 August 2019) 

The number we’ll be serving in one year: 50,000+ Livestock Farmers and 250+ para-vets 

The number we’ll be serving in five years: 200,000+ Livestock Farmers and 1500+ para-vets

Currently we serve through 108 para-vets subscribed to our service at selected unions of 4 upazillas under 4 districts who can serve 20,000+ livestock farmers. Now we would like to expand our customer base to new geographic locations across Bangladesh with an aim to have 300,000 smallholder farmers subscribed to Shurokkha service through 1500+ Para-vets.

We expect that users of our service will experience improvement in their livestock health by 40% 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 also expect that the mortality of cattle and calf will be reduced to 1% and 3% respectively. 

In addition to that, our solution will also ensure a sustainable livelihood for the para-vets by increasing their service credibility and contribute to decreased unemployment rate among rural youths by giving them the opportunity to be para-vets and/or micro-entrepreneurs as the traders of livestock input companies.  

Our data analytics and resulting services to different stakeholders especially input companies and food processors will improve the overall health of livestock value chain with more data-driven decisions by the government, regulatory bodies, financial agents livestock input providers and dairy processing companies. Our data services will also prove valuable resources for livestock researchers and government policy makers. This will facilitate sustainable growth of livestock industry.

Currently, we have the following barriers:

Market: The first barrier is to convince the market (farmers, para-vets, company and government representatives) that taking veterinary services from an expert veterinarian will not only decrease the treatment cost but also increase the productivity and better health of the livestock. Our positive preliminary success stories should be circulated through mass communication campaign.

Technical: Currently our veterinarians review each case as a new one and cannot take the advantage of previous database of cases. But using intelligent algorithms, cross-referencing to similar cases prescribed before, the turn-around time for writing prescription can be significantly reduced.

Financial: Being at the growth stage, we are looking for expanding our services beyond the geographical areas that we are covering at present which is too small in comparison to the areas not covered yet. At the same time, we would like to expand our B2B services by attracting subscriptions by organization - both public and private - which provide support to farmers or buy milk from farmers. But to achieve these objectives, we need an initial investment for attracting new individual and organizational subscribers, promoting the benefits of Shurokkha solution among remote farmers and organizations, increasing the number of in-house veterinarians and other administrative and managerial staffs to reach at a position where our operational costs will be covered from the revenues collected from our customers base e.g. individual farmers/para-vets and organizational subscribers.

We plan to overcome abovementioned barriers as follows:

Market: The success stories of our existing client base among their communities will foster the word-of-mouth marketing of our solution. Besides we will arrange periodic court-yard meeting and advocacy campaign among rural farmers demonstrating the benefits of our services. In addition to that we will form strategic partnership with different training centers for para-vets and their associations to get more para-vets on board. For getting more organizational subscribers, we will use our existing organizational clients to advocate our services to new organizations/projects.

Technical: We are currently working on integrating artificial intelligence/machine learning in our system so that the para-vets received auto-generated suggestions/guidelines in a simulated case.

Financial: We are exploring different financing options including angel investors and development funds to overcome the financial barrier.

Shurokkha is a solution that is originated from the Innovation and Entrepreneurship incubator of mPower Social Enterprises Limited that has developed a number of sustainable and profitable ICT-based services for the disadvantaged population being founded in campuses of Harvard University and MIT in 2008 (initially named ClickDiagnostics) after winning the MIT 100K award in the Social Enterprise track. Henceforth it began its journey with an innovative telemedicine service that connected patients in remote areas in collaboration with the Ministry of Health in Egypt.

Following several tele-dermatology projects in USA, Guatemala and Botswana, ClickDiagnostics shifted its headquarters in 2010 to become mPower Social Enterprises Limited.  Since then, mPower has embarked on engaging in other domains such as Education, Water & Sanitation, Livelihood, Agriculture etc. To date, mPower has partnered with more than 30 of the world's leading development organizations across 15 countries to amplify the impact of development programs through innovative use of ICTs. Presently, mPower has dedicated Health, Agriculture and Livestock units, along with a 25-member software development wing to develop cutting edge solutions for various domains. mPower's ambition is to become one of the premier innovators in designing ICT solutions to solve tough development challenges.

Currently Shurokkha team consists of 14 (Fourteen) members include Team Leader/Project Manager (1), Veterinarians (4), Support and Maintenance Engineers (3), Sales  and Administration Officer (2) and Field Agents (4). In addition to that, the CEO of our mother organization mPower who founded a number of ICT solutions those later established as sustainable business enterprises also provide us time to time strategic guidelines as our Chief Executive of the solution.

The owner of the solution, mPower Social Enterprises Ltd, is a well-established and recognized ICT solution provider in development sectors having 10+ years of experience. mPower also has an incubation wing through which some innovative ICT-based  solutions turn into sustainable and profitable business as spin-offs. So the organizational experience of the mPower is a great asset to Shurokkha.

Mridul Chowdhury, founder and CEO of mPower, a graduate from Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and the University of Texas at Austin, is the Chief Executive of Shurokkha. He has 20+ years of experience in innovating ICT4D solutions in various domains including agriculture, health, humanitarian crisis etc. Notably he led the development of innovative solutions in a number of domains in health, agriculture and livestock and has received numerous awards and recognition over the past decade. 

Shah Md. Mushfiqur Rahman, has been working with mPower for the last 3 years and has been involved in leading teams of ICT based agriculture and livestock advisory service solutions. Before joining mPower he worked with various local and multinational companies for 7+ years which had also enriched his skills and aptitudes in managing people and projects in development sectors.

The Lead Veterinarian Dr. Khaleduzzaman Shamim has 10 years of direct experience in livestock sector in Bangladesh and Malaysia. He has received multiple awards and recognitions for leading innovations in the livestock sector and is highly regarded in the industry as one of the most prominent young stars.

We have three kinds of organizational clients: (1) Government entities and (2) donor-funded programs that provide services to livestock farmers (3) Livestock input companies. 

A key example of #1 is the  Rural Development Academy (RDA), Bagura, a government entity engaged in rural development. RDA is an organizational subscriber to Shurokkha Solution for their farmer groups. RDA has been our client for about 2 years and now they are expanding their subscription base.

Two key examples of #2 is Government of Netherlands-funded Blue Gold program and USAID-funded Livestock Production for Improved Nutrition (LPIN) program. Under these programs, more than 15,000 farmers are subscribed to the Shurokkha service.  

A key example of #3 is Lalteer, which is among the top 3 livestock input suppliers in Bangladesh. We are in negotiation with Lalteer to subscribe to the Shurokkha solution as part of the value-added service they provide to their customers to increase their brand value.

Ensuring on-demand quality veterinary services from professional veterinarians at the door-steps of the livestock farmers at an affordable cost is our key value proposition. The service is carried out from a central location where full-time in-house veterinarians diagnose cases and disseminate prescription through local para-vets utilizing Shurokkha platform. Under the B2C model, these local paravets are recruited on commission basis and pay consultation fee per cases s/he resorts to our veterinarians.  

Since we want to make the service affordable to farmers and motivate para-vets to resort to our veterinarians, we found that individual consultation fee alone is not enough to ensure the sustainability and profitability of our business. Therefore, we resorted to other B2B models. One of these models is providing shurokkha services under monthly subscriptions to the farms and farmer groups of various organizations dealing with livestock and livelihood development projects. 

Apart from that, a significant amount of data is being generated by Shurokkha system which are very crucial to livestock input companies to produce analytics that help them in better decision making will also be a source of revenue.

Additionally, specified and targeted in-app and SMS-based advertisements e.g. if a Para-vet is taking service for an advanced pregnant cow, s/he will get an ad of right nutritional product to be sponsored by the vet pharmaceutical and feed seller companies will be our another revenue source.

Our analysis shows that one Veterinarian can serve 550 cases in a month. If we consider one Venterinian as one unit of service that is capable of serving 550 number of services, total cost including staff salary, logistics facilities, field support, supervision and promotional activities comes to around USD 550 per month. To operationally break even, we need to charge USD 1.08 per consultation. But we have found this amount is too high for the poor farmers we serve as their willingness to pay is typically less USD 0.40 per case. Therefore, in addition to consultation services, we need to sell analytics services and advertisement services to livestock companies. Market research suggests that to sell analytics services, we need a minimum 100,000 registered farmers. 

With about 100,000 farmers as subscribers, we need to cater to around 8,000 calls per month that requires USD 8,000 as monthly operating expense. Around 40% of this expense will be covered from individual consultation fee. We plan the rest of the revenues from organizational subscriptions, selling of analytics to livestock input companies, government entities and NGO-led programs, and advertisement services. Our analysis shows that if we can sell our services to 4 organizations at around USD 1,100 per month, we will reach a break-even point. We are expecting to reach that point by the middle of 2020, after which we expect to make decent profits.

We are applying to Tiger Challenge because we believe that this will help us with covering some of the financial constraints we currently have with respect to expanding rapidly. But more importantly, this would would greatly help us with gaining the credibility needed to raise Series A equity investment to rapidly expand our business. In order for our data analytics and targeted advertisement side of the revenue base to kick in, we need a significant enough number of subscribers. We need the initial investment to reach that tipping point to ensure that a competitor cannot easily overtake the market that we have been creating over the past few years. 

Besides the financial aspect, we believe that a strong affiliation with the MIT Solve Team will help us with fine-tuning our business model, networking for expansion and replication of the model to other countries. Since mPower, the mother organization, was founded with funding from the MIT 100K Business Competition in 2008, there is already a connection with the MIT community, particularly with the MIT Media Lab, winning this Challenge can strengthen that long-standing relationship further.

We actively seek partnership opportunities with Local and International NGOs who are working for and with marginalized Livestock Farmers in their Livelihood Support Projects and want to give their Farmer Groups access to Shurokkha Services.  

We would also like to build partnership with various Livestock Input Companies who want to provide Shorokkha service to their target customers as a value added service. They can also promote their products to our para-vets and registered farmers at the right time following their respective contexts and events.

We would also like to build partnership with Government Agencies working for the betterment of the poor marginalized livestock farmers for knowledge sharing and increasing the credibility of our services among the target customers.