India's field teams sell all day and then report at night. The reports managers get the next morning are late, half filled, and hard to check. This note looks at why that happens, how companies handle it today, and why a phone call in the person's own language is the simplest fix.
The problem: selling all day, reporting all night
It is 8:50 pm in Yavatmal, in the middle of the cotton season. Sandeep, a field officer for a crop-protection company, has met 14 farmers and 4 dealers since sunrise. In three villages he saw the same thing: pink bollworm inside the green bolls. That is the most useful market news his company will hear this week, because by Sunday farmers in the taluka will be asking dealers for the same spray.
What reaches his area manager is a chat message typed with one thumb: "Sir 14 farmer met, 4 dealer, PBW seen 3 village, detail tomorrow." It lands at 10:20 pm, between 30 other messages. Nobody totals it, and the village names never arrive. By the time the regional office reads it, two dealers have run out of stock. Sandeep is an example. The pattern is not.
Multiply that by a team of 20, every evening, and three failures repeat:
- Late. Reports are written at the end of a long day, so they arrive at night or the next morning, after the moment to act has passed.
- Half filled. Typing on a small screen after ten hours on the road means products, quantities, and reasons get skipped.
- Hard to check. Free text in twenty styles means the manager calls back, one person at a time.
The numbers explain why typing is a poor fit:
- Sales reps spend only 28% of their week actually selling. The rest goes to admin such as data entry, according to Salesforce's State of Sales research.
- Only 10.6% of Indians speak English (Census of India 2011, summarised on Wikipedia), yet most report formats are in English.
- About 350 million Indians still use a feature phone (IDC, quoted by TechCrunch, July 2024), which cannot run a reporting app.
The teams are large. NBFC-MFIs alone employ 1,26,296 loan officers across 22,450 branches (MFIN Micrometer, Q2 FY 2025-26). One drug maker, Sun Pharma, has about 11,000 medical reps and related staff (Business Standard, 2022). Field staff also serve about 2.82 lakh agri-input dealers (DAESI guidelines, cited in JAEM 2017) and about 3 crore kirana stores (CAIT estimate via Business Today, 2024). Every one of those visits ends in a report someone has to write.
How the market handles it today
Most companies move the typing around. They do not remove it.
- Paper. Daily call reports, visit registers, and order books are still common, especially in pharma and lending. Reps often fill them from memory after the visits.
- Chat groups. Everyone is already there. More than 500 million people in India use WhatsApp (TechCrunch, June 2026). A group chat is not a record: messages scroll away, formats vary, and nobody can total them.
- Spreadsheets. Area managers copy paper and chat into a weekly sheet. That can take hours, and the rows are stale by the time they are neat.
- A smartphone app. Larger companies use an app for attendance, orders, and visits. Orders can work well. The daily note is still typed, often in English, on a phone with patchy data.
- A call to the manager. This is the most natural format, and the least recorded. The manager hears it once and then has to write it down.
The person already knows what happened. The cost is turning that into something the company can total. The same Salesforce research puts non-selling time at about 72% of the week, and data entry is a large part of it.
What breaks in each sector
Software often covers the structured part of the day: orders, collections, attendance. The narrative, meaning what happened and what the market said, still travels by paper, chat, or a phone call.
- Pharma. Medical reps file a daily call report. Many still write it from memory. Area managers rebuild the week by hand.
- FMCG. Sales officers record orders well. Stock problems and what the shopkeeper said become a typed note, or they are skipped.
- Microfinance. Loan officers run the centre meeting, then enter attendance and collections later at the branch. Managers see problems days late.
- Agri-inputs. Field officers phone the area manager. Farmer meetings go unrecorded, and a rushed call gets the stock wrong.
- Construction. Site engineers keep a diary and a chat thread of photos. Shortages are scattered across messages.
Ways to fix it
Some fixes make the typing stricter. Others stop asking people to type. Only the second kind removes the cost.
- Stricter forms. Fixed paper or a fixed sheet, and the manager chases every blank. Fine for a team of five. The manager's evening grows with the team, and the report is still late.
- A fixed chat message. People copy a template and fill the blanks. They already have the app. Lines still get skipped, and nothing is totalled.
- A mandatory app form. Required fields, a location, and a photo give structure. It needs a smartphone and data, and a free-text note is still typed.
- A keypad menu. "Press 1 for visits done" works on any phone. It cannot carry the pink bollworm, or the village name.
- A home-built voice note. A team can collect voice notes and try to summarise them. Someone has to keep that running, and if nobody asks a follow-up, the gap stays a gap.
- A call the person places, with questions. They call one number when the day is done, or they would send a voice note. An assistant asks that company's questions in their language and files a structured report. No typing. Any phone. A vague answer gets one more question.
One variant is worth setting aside: a bot that dials people at a fixed time. A call that arrives in the middle of a visit gets declined. Letting the person call in when the day is done matches how field work runs. PeopleG does not dial them. They call PeopleG.
How PeopleG does it
PeopleG turns the day's report into a short phone call. The person calls one number when the day is done, speaks in their own language, and an assistant asks the company's questions and writes the report. Nobody types.
Here is Sandeep's evening again:
- 8:52 pm. After the last dealer he calls the report number from his own phone. That number is how PeopleG knows who is calling. There is no login and no app.
- The assistant says it is an AI, then asks the company's questions in Marathi: how many farmers and dealers, what farmers asked for, what is short at each dealer, and anything unusual in the fields.
- He answers the way he talks, mixing Marathi and English product names. When he says "three villages", the assistant asks once which ones. Anything he does not say is left empty. It is not guessed. A field report by phone walks through that call on its own.
- About three minutes later the report is filed. The pink bollworm sighting is a flag against those villages.
- The area manager reads it the same evening on Today: who has filed, who has not, and the flags. The evening note follows the time the company sets. What a manager reads covers that side.
A later call the same day adds to the same report. The latest clear answer wins. There is still no app to install, which is the point of why the field team does not install an app.
Why a phone call fits this job
For years, "digitise the field" meant an app in every hand. A conversation fits the day better, for four reasons.
Speech can follow how India actually talks. A report is not a clean sentence in one language. It is a phone line, an accent, and a sentence that switches language halfway, with a product name left in English. That is now something a call can carry, without a form.
The habit is already a phone. India has more than 500 million WhatsApp users, and about 350 million people still use a feature phone. A normal call reaches both, with no install and no data plan.
Asking is the useful part. A wall of text is another report nobody totals. The useful step is a question when the answer is vague, and an empty field when nothing was said. That is what a manager can trust.
The time comes back to selling. If most of the week is not selling, a few minutes returned each day is worth more than another screen. Managers get the day's facts the same evening, not next week.
Questions people ask
What is a daily call report? It is the record filed at the end of the day: who they met, what was discussed or sold, samples or collections, and any problems. Pharma calls it a DCR. Lenders, agri-input firms, and FMCG companies use their own versions. A free daily call report format is a starting sheet.
Can they file without an app? Yes. They call one number and answer out loud. The assistant asks the company's questions and writes the report.
Does it work in Indian languages? Yes. The language is set per person. A rep in Maharashtra can answer in Marathi. A rep in Tamil Nadu is not walked through an English form. Hindi and Hinglish are two of the twelve languages on the call. Mixed speech, such as Hindi with English product names, stays as it was said.
Do they need a smartphone? No. A normal call works on any phone, including a feature phone.
How is this different from a sales app? A sales app is strong for orders and attendance, and it relies on typing. A call captures the day's story and leaves a blank where nothing was said. See a sales app versus a call and paper reports versus a call.
Where are reports stored? Reports are stored in India, on servers in Mumbai. The security page is the detail.
What does it cost? There is a 14-day trial for up to 10 people, with no card. Prices after that are on the pricing page. India prices exclude 18% GST.
Add the team, give them one number, and read the day's reports the same evening. Start the trial, or see how a call becomes a report. For sample packs, the record and the 12-pack warning are in keeping free samples on the record.