A Collaboration to Create Intuitive Digital Products to Facilitate, Educate, and Empower Pakistani Farmers
Telenor Pakistan
Telenor needed a helping hand with a project initiated by the Pakistani government to facilitate farmers. It turned to DPL for its Android app development and user experience (UX) design expertise to create apps that could easily be understood by all users, regardless of their literacy levels.
The Client
Telenor is a Norwegian majority state-owned telecommunications mogul. With operations worldwide and over 172 million subscribers, it’s one of the world’s largest mobile telecom companies.
Telenor Pakistan is a wholly-owned subsidiary. It’s the second largest cellular and digital services provider in the country, controlling 26.2% of the cellular market with 49.4 million subscribers.
In addition to cellular connections, Telenor Pakistan offers 4G-enabled handsets, branded mobile handsets, and 3G broadband devices and 4G MiFi and Wingle . It was the first to launch Voice over LTE (VoLTE) in Pakistan and is conducting 5G trials to roll this service soon. In addition, it deployed the country’s first branchless banking service, Easypaisa.
The company has also won several local awards, including the 2011 Prime Minister of Pakistan Trophy for Largest Foreign Direct Investment (Telecom Sector), and the 2018 Best Practice Award at the Center for Global Inclusion at the Diversity and Inclusion Conference.
The Problem
Telenor Pakistan was chosen by the Government of Punjab for its ‘Empowerment of Kissan through Digital & Financial Inclusion’ initiative. Collaborating with the Department of Agriculture – Punjab, the telecom provider launched the Connected Agriculture Platform for Punjab (CAPP).
Under CAPP, mobile agriculture and digital solutions were created to empower Pakistani farmers. Through Android apps such Kissan Assistance App and Crop Calendar, farmers can access valuable information such as weather conditions.
However, Telenor required an intuitive design and user experience that kept farmers’ literacy levels in mind. While the apps were to support multiple languages including Urdu, they needed to be easy to understand and use by all.
The Solution
Telenor’s apps were a welcome challenge for DPL; and we are thankful that our team rose to the occasion. In addition to helping with the development process, the team’s user-centered design skills guaranteed that layouts/designs are well understood by the farmers.
As a result of our collaboration, we produced:
- An app that allows users to view videos on farming techniques and similar information
- An app that lets famers use tokens placed inside the sack of seeds to get a subsidy amount via EasyPaisa
- A weather app to display hyperlocal weather updates according to the user’s current or manually entered location
In addition to designing the apps to be easy to understand and use without effort, we used different languages spoken in Pakistan, including Urdu. This complemented the simple design and helped us increase emotional engagement.
The Impact
The apps DPL and Telenor worked on were just the beginning of a collection of digital products that aim to help farmers as well as the Pakistani rural community.
The Khushaal Watan platform by Telenor has been praised by the government as a promising development that will ensure the economy’s progressive and sustainable growth.
We at DPL are glad to be part of this journey and for playing a role in providing cutting-edge digital tools to Pakistani farmers.
“The exacting deadlines and quality requirements for such projects demand stellar potential from the developers and designers; fortunately, we found such resources at DPL. Our collaboration with DPL has convinced us of their commitment to quality and reliable delivery.”
Talib Siddique – Telenor Pakistan
