On June 12, 2009, Finland-based telecom giant, Nokia Corporation (Nokia) launched its Nokia Life Tools (NLT) service in the state of Maharashtra in India. This was a bid to expand its rural base in the country. The service was commercially rolled out after the successful implementation of the pilot program in Maharashtra, in November 2008. The launch of the NLT service marked the increasing accessibility of value-added services (VAS) to rural consumers in India. Targeted at the rural consumers, the NLT service offered a range of services in the areas of agriculture, education, and entertainment to address the information gaps in the rural community. Nokia began focusing on the Indian rural market in 2003 when it launched a mobile handset with features such as longer battery life, one-touch flashlight, etc., that catered to the needs of the rural consumers. Over the years, it extended its support to the rural markets by launching several low-end phones that rural consumers found affordable.

However, the company felt the need to serve the rural market by offering a value proposition along with its handsets. It noted that the rural consumers, especially farmers and students, had little or no access to the information they needed due to lack of resources and erratic Internet connections. This prompted Nokia to launch a service that would be embedded in its handsets and would serve the needs of the rural community. In November 2008, the company launched a pilot program for testing its NLT service in Maharashtra. The test phase was carried out for a period of four months and the results, revealed in April 2009, showed that farmers and students, in particular, had benefited through this service.

The farmers could access the latest information on crops, weather, market prices of seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides, etc. through this service. The students benefited by