Hind Lever plans 1,000 i-shakti kiosks in Andhra

Hindustan Lever Ltd(HLL), the country's largest consumer goods company, has launched an internet-based rural information service, called i-shakti in Andhra Pradesh in association with the state government's Rajiv Internet Village programme.

The company opened its 250th kiosk at Putapakka village of Nalgonda district today, extending its services to Vishakapatnam, West Godavari and East Godavari districts, HLL said in a release here.

The soap-to-salt maker expects to set up over 1,000 such kiosks by the end of the year in the state.

I-shakti is an IT-based rural information service network that has been developed to provide information and services to meet villagers' needs in medical, health and hygiene, animal husbandry, agriculture, education and women's empowerment among others. The service is an extension of Lever's Project Shakti.

Meanwhile, the company is also planning to extend its reach of project Shakti to over one lakh villages by 2005 from the present 20,000 villages in 196 districts of Andhra pradesh, karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra The scaling up will result in creating over 25,000 entrepreneurs and helping over 10 crore rural consumers, HLL said.