Market entry strategy for white labelled networking and entertainment services for telecommunication operators in Pan-Asian Value Added Services Market
Student name: Mr Sandeep Swain
Guide: Dr Sapna Narula
Year of completion: 2013
Host Organisation: Atchik- Realtime, New Delhi
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Anil Gupta
Abstract: Mobile phones today have moved beyond their fundamental role of communications and
have graduated to become an extension of the persona of the user. We are witnessing an
era when users buy mobile phones not just to be in touch, but to express themselves, their
attitude, feelings& interests Customers continuously want more from their phone. They
use their cellular phones to play games, read news headlines, surf the Internet, keep a tab
on astrology, and listen to music, make others listen to their music, or check their bank
balance. Thus, there exists a vast world beyond voice that needs to be explored and
tapped and the entire cellular industry is heading towards it to provide innovative options
to their customers. Spoilt by choice, the mobile phone subscribers are beginning to
choose their operators on the basis of the value added services they offer. The increased
importance of VAS has also made content developers burn the midnight oil to come up
with better and newer concepts and services. To understand where this industry is at
present and where it is heading, we are preparing this report. This report is prepared from
the point of view of a new VAS launching in the states of Orissa, Bihar and West Bengal
(Except Kolkata).
With the ever increasing monthly additions and subscribership, TRAI reports that there
are approx 601 Mn mobile subscribers in India as of April 2012. Considering the fact that
the metropolitan and the large urban cities have nearly reached a high level of
penetration, Tier I & II cities as well as rural towns seem to be the next beneficiaries of
this technology. Due to this, the network providers and other industry stakeholders have
to provide advanced services to the existing matured users as well as ensure that financial
challenged sectors are provided mobile services at affordable costs.
The revenue through MVAS has been steadily growing in the past years and by the
estimates it is INR 11,680 Crores. Traditional MVAS like Caller Ring Back Tones
(CRBT) P2P SMS and still continue to be a substantial provider of these revenues. The
stakeholders, however, are not able to garner higher revenues from value added services
due to limitations in technological infrastructural platform. At the same time, in keeping
up with the competition the call rates have been dropping resulting into low overall
Average Revenue per User (ARPU). With the expectations of the advantages that 3G
could provide and the technological innovations (specifically in devices and content), the
anticipations towards improved service delivery abound.
