Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Tuesday launched 'Kannada' handsets and announced a strategic tie up with farmer's cooperative IFFCO to exploit the rural market.

This is as part of its marketing strategy to cover 90 per cent of Karnataka's population by 2009 and to achieve deeper rural penetration, Venkatesh V, CEO, Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel, Karnataka, said announcing its 'Grameena Mobile Kranthi' campaign.

Even though Karnataka has 17 million mobile users, the number of rural mobile users in the state was just five million, accounting for just 13 per cent of penetration in rural market, he added.

Airtel has entered into a strategic tie up with Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) to form a new joint venture company called IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited and would provide farmers with five voice messages free everyday giving information on market rates, weather and other agricultural inputs, said Govindrajan, Head, South India, IFFCO.

The telecom major has partnered with Nokia to come up with two handsets that would have the menu and sms facilities in Kannada.

The Nokia monochrome 1200 model would be available at Rs 1272 while the Nokia 1208 colour handset would be available at Rs 1560.

The Airtel Grameen Pack enables the farmer to go mobile for as low as Rs 50, said Venkatesh. Airtel would offer calling rates at 50 paise per minute for calls between IFFCO members.

Bharti Airtel, which has a market share of 41 per cent in the state targets expanding the rural penetration from 13 to 20 per cent.