With a customer base of over 38 mn including over 1.3 mn individual overseas
retail customers, Reliance Communications has emerged as one of the leading
service providers in India and is now spreading its wings in rural areas with
massive investments. Content and applications is one of the major focus areas
for the company that is covering over 13,000 towns and 500,000 villages.
Reliance Mobile World has become popular among the masses and the youth. Over
2,500 applications on Reliance Mobile World make subscribers' lives productive
and simple. Mahesh Prasad, president, Applications, Solutions and Content Group,
Reliance Communications, in an interview to VOICE&DATA, talks about his plans on
rural content, and mobile advertising. Prasad is excited about the new
opportunities. Excerpts
Reliance Communications has taken the lead to venture into the rural belt
with the Reliance Developer Program announcing the 3rd mobile application
contest with a focus on rural applications-both on GSM and CDMA networks. How
has been the response from the developers, and what are the focus areas?
Ever since we started the first Reliance Developer Program, we have been
getting good response. Though we have the capability, we wanted our ecosystem to
innovate; we do not want to innovate separately. Since we are focusing on the
rural markets as well, our special focus is on rural applications. We have
selected five major areas to focus-transportation, finance, health, education,
and governance, where we think the country needs to focus. In fact, we are
already doing a lot of work on these areas. As these projects are in the initial
phase, we cannot divulge more details about this. The response from the
developer community to participate in the program is enormous.
All leading operators are expanding in the rural markets. Many operators
are keen to create special content for the rural markets. Do we really need
specialized content for the rural masses, and can they afford to pay for the
specialized content?
I feel that we should not differentiate between rural and urban areas in
terms of providing specialized content. In some rural markets, people who can
afford to pay for mobile phone and VAS services are more than the number in
urban areas. I also think that they will be looking at content for running their
businesses such as vegetable marketing, agriculture production, etc. At present,
mandi prices are available on RWorld. Rural people will be excited to see live
cricket scores, video footage of their famous film stars, specialized
entertainment content, forecast about climate, price of fertilizer, etc.
Ideally, content made for rural applications can be successful in the market
place. If you look at the corporate usage in metros, they need details about
their business, cricket scores, sales force management applications, and video
of film stars, among other things. Is this different from the usage of people in
rural areas? I feel India has progressed to a level where we should not
differentiate between rural and urban services.
 |
| Mahesh Prasad, president,
Applications, Solutions and Content Group, Reliance Communications |
Operators are increasingly focusing on the rural market. Does it make
sense for telecom companies to go rural?
There is a growing concern among operators about the ARPU. ARPU is driven by
calls made by customers. I feel the network of interaction will drive revenue in
areas where we need to improve. Rural people have a present system for
communication. When they are approached for technology usage and move toward
another platform, we need to create more awareness.
Enterprises have always shared their concern on lack of availability of
mobile applications that can improve their performance. Are SPs responsible for
this kind of responses from CTOs of large telecom users?
As I mentioned earlier, more and more enterprises are looking for business
applications on the move. They would like to save time and be more productive.
But the main priority of large enterprises is still the return on investment.
They are also concerned about security issues, while integration of mobile
platform with their current IT infrastructure is a major hurdle. Some
enterprises want customized solutions and this may add on to the cost. But the
number of enterprises deploying customized solution is increasing. I feel once
enterprises make up their mind to offer better services to their customers, they
should not wait as SPs are ready with tools.
R World has won an award recently. With this, Reliance Communications joined
the likes of Verizon Wireless, Coca Cola, Proctor&Gamble, Philips, Toyota,
Pepsi, Renault, Nike, Volkswagen, etc toward creating the mobile advertising
category.
This award puts Reliance Communications as well as India again on the global
mobile advertising platform. The campaign for Fair&Lovely Scholarship Program
2007 on Reliance Mobile or R World has been voted as the Best Use of Mobile
Marketing in the direct response category at the Mobile Marketing Association
Annual Global Awards held in Los Angeles.
The Fair&Lovely scholarships are awarded annually to deserving young girls
who intend to pursue higher education in India. The Rs 100,000 scholarship,
constituted five years ago, is meant for women with an aptitude and ambition to
achieve their goals. Over 300 women across India have been awarded scholarships
through this program. To offer visibility and synergy to the campaign, R World
platform was thought to be the best medium for advertising the program. The
campaign was advertised on R World during August 14 to September 17, 2007, and
received over 45,000 responses.
Mobile medium is now rapidly emerging as a medium wherein all aspects of a
brand campaign-building awareness to lead generation to buzz marketing-can be
created and delivered in a holistic way.
Is mobile advertising marketing taking off in India too?
With NDNC coming into picture, SMS-based campaigns are going to show more
prominence. This means mobile advertising marketing will be one of the main
tools to reach out to customers. Mobile advertising, a $1 bn industry globally
with a 3 bn subscriber base, is set to take off in a big way in India. As
pioneer of mobile advertising in the country, we have offered mobile advertising
solutions to a number of bluechip clients. Brand managers are using the mobile
platform to create and start quick marketing campaigns.
Does the proposed Android initiative by Google pose a threat to mobile
operators and content companies?
Google may be trying to dominate the mobile advertisement world. I feel it is
going to co-exist since it will be an open alliance. However, we cannot say that
all initiatives of Google will meet with success. Ultimately, the customer is
getting more options to select. They will decide what to select based on the
benefits services or solutions offer.
Baburajan K
baburajank@cybermedia.co.in
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