For over a decade, Comviva Technologies? endeavour has been to help operators transform their value added services (VAS) business by making services faster to launch, more cost efficient and engaging for customers. Comviva?s impressive growth results from both organic and inorganic expansion. In 2002, Comviva merged with CellCloud Technologies and in 2007, Comviva acquired Jataayu Software, a leading player in the mobile Internet space. Comviva has also succeeded in attracting investment from leading business groups and venture capitalists, such as Sequoia Capital and Cisco Systems. Likewise, Comviva CEO Manoranjan ?Mao? Mohapatra?s career has been dedicated to the development and deployment of innovative software communications solutions in rapidly growing markets.
In a recent interaction, he tells Sudhir Chowdhary that innovation will drive the growth of the mobile VAS segment in India. Excerpts:
Don?t you think that innovation and discovery are the keywords which will drive growth for the mobile VAS segment in India?
VAS is becoming a key differentiating tool for operators. With competition across markets intensifying, mobile service providers globally are facing the challenge of having to deliver more for less: greater volumes of messaging and data traffic, higher levels of service performance and faster and improved customer care. Operators need to look at driving their top-line growth with innovative VAS services. Innovation to introduce new VAS service and increase usage, where discovery is one important element through ease of navigation, personalisation features, local content, relevant access mechanisms which could be over voice, text or Web driven. Growing customer fragmentation has accelerated service innovation cycles. In order to succeed, operators need to constantly expand their portfolio of services to cater to the needs of diverse user segments. Addressing these demands requires operators to balance investments in new innovation with potential revenue opportunities.
What are the new VAS services that will emerge once 3G operations are fully launched in the Indian market?
It will take time to feel the full impact of 3G in the VAS space, but we see 3G having a strong positive influence on VAS usage. Once 3G services are fully launched, operators will be able to offer richer services such as mobile internet and video as there will be greater bandwidth available to deliver an enhanced service experience. Users will gain a far richer and far more engaging service experience, prompting them to use new multimedia services and use these for longer. Whilst operators will continue to offer existing services, such as ringback tones, messaging and infotainment services, there will be the opportunity to offer services that require more video or image-based content, such as telemedicine, wireless teleconferencing and e-learning.
How do you foresee 3G VAS playing an important role in the rural areas?
At Comviva, we believe that tapping the rural market is critical as the operators are now looking at non-urban markets to expand their growth. With prepaid dominating emerging markets and the majority of growth coming from these markets, mobile service providers require a proven, highly scalable, flexible solution to handle the growing volumes of transactions and the specific needs of particular segments. Having enabled prepaid subscribers to become comfortable making electronic transactions, Comviva has been addressing a critical need: the lack of access to formal financial services among a large segment of prepaid users.
Once individuals have access to a mobile phone service, the issue of payment for such services arises. Experience from rapidly expanding markets indicates that an electronic prepaid recharge service can enhance the uptake of mobile phone subscription?generating increased revenues for operators. Equally important is the fact that telecom operators are able to expand services profitably.
China is leading the world in the uptake of mobile finance, with 77% of consumers using their phones to conduct financial transactions. What is your view on mobile banking uptake in India?
China and India are at very different stages of mobile adoption and have a very different regulatory environment. The government of India has made financial inclusion a top priority. It includes the delivery of banking services at affordable costs to vast sections of underserved and low-income groups. We saw mobile commerce emerge as a key trend this year and it will only strengthen as we go forward.
The model which is better suited with regard to the regulatory environment, is to have operators partner with banks. Some operators have begun to pilot mobile money transfer in association with banks and other financial institutions.
At Comviva, we have been innovating to address the technological concerns with regard to complexities involved. We now offer our Mobiquity solution that allows operators the flexibility to work with different models. The coming year will clearly be the year of unprecedented growth in mobile commerce with clear benefits for financial inclusion.
Among the youth in India, entertainment services are popular. Consumers also look for utility based-services like location information, m-commerce, and local content-rich services. Beyond these, do you see any interesting trends in VAS?
The onset of 3G will also offer richer experience to consumers and therefore it will become critical for VAS providers to become more innovative and dynamic with their offerings. Mobile video applications will be adopted by specific segments (youth, professional, urban, affluent), probably in the form of ?snacking?. Social networking is a way of life for the youth segment.
Operators will have to look at ways to monetise social networking. Consumers want services customised to their specific preferences. The operator?s challenge will be to cater to the audience of one without escalating cost to serve.
Entertainment, utility and other services will continue to grow, however we expect to see a huge uptake of data usage over the mobile phones. For many in emerging markets the wonders of digital technology will be first experienced via a mobile phone rather than a computer, game console, digital camera or MP3 player.
What are your expansion plans for India and other growth markets?
Comviva goes beyond boundaries to figure out new ways of transforming service providers? VAS business. By drawing on extensive experience and taking a fresh approach to addressing the myriad market challenges facing mobile service providers. For over a decade, Comviva has been delivering mobile solutions beyond VAS to mobile operators in growth markets globally with customers in over 85 countries. This insight into customer needs across geographies helps us develop more relevant offerings for operator customers in different parts of the world, enabling us to continue to grow our business.
We plan to offer a wide suite of products and services that address the majority of operators’ non-voice needs helping them to enrich people?s lives. We will work closely with operators and the wider ecosystem to achieve this?and at the same time we engineer our solutions to ensure operators are able to accelerate revenue growth, optimise cost structures and deliver an enhanced customer service experience.