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While India showed its commitment to climate change by switching off lights to observe the Earth Hour, the VAS industry also geared up to match the efforts by coming up with strategies aimed at developing an eco-friendly environment.

Idea's Sirji advertisement made an imaginative and catchy statement for an alternate to paper use with the help of an agonized tree. The ad surely kicked off discussions among stakeholders of the VAS industry to give a serious thought to VAS products, to catch the bandwagon of green initiatives.

VAS is growing at an exciting pace the world over, and India is among the top three countries for mobile and Internet VAS. Innovations in the domain of mobile entertainment, digital promotion, network and utility VAS offerings-which include focused product lines for service providers, enterprises and media-can form a complete ecosystem which can be the focal point for green VAS solutions.

Interestingly, VAS has always been green, even before the terminology came in vogue. Mobile VAS can be termed green in the long run because of the inherent nature of its service offerings. When the information comes to the user in an electronic form, it bypasses more traditional forms of communications like printed paper, magazines etc. This leads to less strain on natural resources. All mobile VAS services like ringtones, SMS, voice SMS and subscribed services fall in this category.

Waking Up to the Reality
With new technologies in the mobile market, it is the right time to get into the mobile enterprises applications space with green offerings. Dr Inderpal Singh Mumick, CEO, Kirusa says, "I would say that despite naysayers discounting carbon credits, companies are realizing that green is not a myth but a reality that we have to wake up to soon."

With green in VAS, organizations have come up with strategic initiatives designed to work towards enabling their managed services portfolio to further enhance, build and offer stronger capabilities in developing an eco-friendly environment. The success of green VAS in India is dependent on the mobile ecosystem which can enhance and advance the usage of its services. The market expansion in this domain has to be catered to ardently, and this offers a wide scope in increasing the services uptake.

The new green VAS technology will leave behind the existing ones by providing a single platform to cater to end-to-end commerce services for the end-user. The market also needs to adapt green VAS and utilize the services that will positively impact their lives. Mobiles can play an important role in enabling these services and providing customized solutions as per the need of the hour.

Says Jagdish Mitra, CEO, CanvasM, "Green VAS solutions will offer a blend of technologies with functional benefits to cater to the social or professional requirements in various verticals." With the new green world of VAS, innovative interactive communication is a way to address the demands of the next generation technologies.

Advanced communications with mobile enterprise applications with green solutions are gaining high priority for enterprises as they drive RoI with process improvement. The scope of enterprise mobility holds a strong potential with more user-friendly, easy-to-use versions of email, calendaring and corporate portal access applications amongst others.

An Ongoing Process
The Idea Sirji campaign added fuel to the fire for green initiatives but it is not for this alone that the industry has turned to green. Going by the definition of green: any service that saves time and effort and does not use carbon intensive methods is green. Mobile VAS is one such service.

Says Deepak Halan, group business director, IMRB International, " Information VAS (mobile newspapers, storing e-bills, e-tickets and boarding passes on mobile, etc) and m-commerce (considerably less fuel is burnt with fewer visits to the bank since my mobile phone now takes care of those transactions) are the two categories which are impacting the environment positively."

Adds Mitra, "Green VAS services uptake will be a steady and ongoing process as the market expansion in this domain has to be catered ardently. This offers a wide scope in increasing revenue for service providers and operators." Green VAS will serve as a flexible solution that meets customer needs by combining the whole host of communication devices into one strong business device.

Industry Attempts
Telcos have shown an interest in green VAS initiatives and factors that will contribute to its success such as infrastructure development with a strong network capability, more effective promotional campaigns and efforts, setting up local knowledge share for dealing with customers and prospects, etc.

In rural India too VAS is expected to have a considerable positive impact on the environment. With the increasing penetration of operators in rural India and falling 3G enabled handsets prices, it is expected that in the next four to five years many rural citizens will not need to travel via say tractors to the nearest hospital for consulting a doctor on their health diagnostic reports.

Smartphones and other m-device will enable storage and transmission of personal health information. Also, information VAS services such as market price of crops, will mean that farmers have to travel less frequently to mandis. Moreover, special VAS applications such videoconferencing with crop experts or those that enable farmers to switch on a water pump a few kms away will result in burning less fuel due to cutting down on commuting.

Dr Mumick adds, "Telecom growth is driven by mobile VAS, which in turn is driven primarily by the younger generation. Indian youth today is more aware and empathetic towards the environment." Apart from social re-engineering causes, companies are also looking at identifying with the current causes to appeal to the young generation and capitalize on that.

Although serious attempts are being made by industry experts, yet a lot has to be done in making the concept of green VAS a success.

Archana Singh
archanasi@cybermedia.co.in

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