Future of mobile value added services & white label mobile entertainment for mobile operators in India
Student name: Ms Upasana Kaura
Guide: Dr Umesh Gulla
Year of completion: 2011
Host Organisation: Atchik- Realtime
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Anil Gupta
Abstract: With the ever increasing monthly additions and subscribership, TRAI reports that there
are approx 601 Mn mobile subscribers in India as of April 2010. 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.
In order to ensure a high growth in MVAS revenue, it is imperative that newer avenues
are explored to provide user-centric content and application services. Such forecasting is
not unfounded as there are innovative offerings available for users. However, the need is
for identifying specific niche segments that require certain specialized delivery. These
segments could be among the urban or non-urban users. Long term growth will be
ensured if detailed learnings from user experiences are examined continuously in
providing innovative services.
