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The explosive growth of subscribers in India has made the country a lucrative market for all the stakeholders of telecom. However, value added services have always been on a high in the Indian telecom plethora. VAS industry is being pegged to reach 1,00,000 crores annually by 2020. After shelling out huge money in 3G licensing, the companies are continuously looking at innovations and revenue streams. The VAS market is expected to chart new growth charts in the post 3G deployment. Entertainment supplemented by video, voice calls with video, video CRBT are expected to become a reality. 3D pictures will also be an easily available reality.

With VAS becoming the main source of revenue for the operators, the aim has now shifted to cater to the best possible to the individual needs and again, many companies have started focusing on personalized services. Personalized services are being seen as the best way to cater to the needs and ensure the maximum customer satisfaction. In the context of mobile VAS, the Indian market is unique. The diversity of language, culture and preferences in each state and its sub-regions has led operators to think beyond vanilla VAS, and create content that suit the needs of this diverse population.

Various companies have been involved in innovations that are becoming intensively concentrated on catering one-on-one needs of the customers. This trend is being adopted by many companies not only to improve their revenue but also to establish a direct connection with the subscribers.

Need for Personalization
VAS in India has been primarily driven by entertainment, however, utility services are finding an uptake at a high speed among the subscribers. Sarvesh Asthana, senior vice president, technology, Netxcell, says “It is obvious that to have maximum satisfaction, one should be targeted with the options and services that are relevant to subscriber's personality, taste and need.” Managing customer satisfaction in this era of converged services are the best ways to ensure satisfaction. With the plethora of services being launched day to day, it is best for the subscribers to identify with the personal needs and actually empower them with handling there day to day life requirements. Sangeet Chowfla, chief strategy officer & EVP global market units, Comviva, says, “Mobile devices will evolve as remote controls for ever expanding types of real-time cloud based services including the emergency category of location based services, creating opportunities and dislocations. It will empower customers in transformative ways”. T Hariraj, senior vice president, sales and marketing, Bay Talkitec, opines “Analyzing the consumer behavior and creating marketing strategies have always been pressure points for marketers. With the changing customer expectations, their requirements have become very specific and have thus given way to personalized services.”

Some Innovations
The companies have been technologically innovating to cater to the different needs of the subscribers. Netxcell introduced 'Cricket on Mobile', 'Advertising on Mobile' and 'Exam Results on Mobile' in India and these services are the most popular value added services accessed by the mobile users. Says Asthana, “After analyzing the Indian mobile industry, Netxcell has identified around hundred such SMS informational and entertainment services which are offering to the mobile operators in different mobile networks in India. Personalization is being applied to all the services that are being offered.” Chowfala explains, “ As early as 2015, mobile would have been integrated with almost every service.”

Another initiative taken by OnMobile to address the need for personalized and localized content is through the studio initiative, Studio allows operators to offer differentiated services in different markets-within India itself, a user in Punjab would communicate in a different language and dialect from the one in which a user in New Delhi is comfortable with. Studio overcomes this by creating content not just in different languages, but different dialects and manners of speech.

Location based services are also the breed of personalized services that have been able to carve a space for itself. Companies have been innovating a lot in this space to provide high end location services. Bay Talkitec has developed many such solutions, among which next gen VAS SDP is worth mentioning which is a single box solution and highly scalable platform supporting all mobile networks right from 2G to 3G including NGN (Next Generation Network). It has been designed so as to help launch all essential services quickly, with low TCO and high ROI, and the built in media gateway makes it possible to provide services using Session Initiated Protocol (SIP) and SIGTRAN, suitable for NGN environment.

Way to Go
The personalization of services have led the subscribers to spend more for the services as it is of utilitarian value. The biggest challenge that has been for the VAS industry at present is to deal with the stagnancy that has come in the transition phase to 3G. There is a sense of monotony that is now existent among the stakeholders. Most of the innovations that have taken place are happening keeping 3G in the mind. However, Personalized services are expected to show an upward trend post 3G deployment. More usage of such services would be due to the continuous and high penetration of smart-phones leveraging the opportunity through mobile applications.

Says Mouli Raman, CTO and co-founder, OnMobile,”The current generation of mobile users no longer has the patience or tolerance for mistakes. Hence, the challenge today lies not in creating rich content; but localizing this content and ensuring easy discovery of the same by every common man located across the length and breadth of the country.” Although, the sheer diversity of the subscriber base presents a challenge-while India alone has several variations in preference and language, global markets are diverse as well. Offering localized services that will appeal to each region is a challenge that could be overcome by establishing teams that can directly interface with consumers and operators in these geographies.

Archana Singh
archanasi@cybermedia.co.in

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