MediaNama: Digital Media in India

Comviva Inks Worldwide Etisalat Mobile VAS Deal

Nikhil Pahwa — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:33:00 +0000

Comviva, the Bharti Groups mobile Value Added Services company has announced a Mobile Value Added Services deal with Etisalat, targeting more 100 million of Etisalat’s mobile subscribers globally. Comviva intends to offer solutions related on voice, video, music and messaging. Etisalat claims to have more than doubled their revenues from content, data and VAS in the last year, across the group. The deployment is expected to begin immediately.

Abu Dhabi headquartered and UAE government owned, Etisalat has operations in the UAE, Saudi Arabia (Mobily), Pakistan (PTCL), Egypt, Sudan (Canar), Nigeria (EMTS), Tanzania (Zantel), Indonesia (XL Axiata), Afghanistan, Iran, Sri Lanka, India (Etisalat DB), and West Africa including Ivory Coast, Benin, Gabon and Togo, Niger and Central Africa (Atlantique Telecom).

While on the face of it, the scale of this deal appears to be large, we still don’t know what this deal entails: the markets covered; whether Etisalat DB (India) is a part of the deal; whether there is any exclusivity involved (either for Comviva or Etisalat in these markets); specific solutions that Comviva intends to provide; the kind of investment required, will it be front-loaded; and how the rollout is expected to pan out.

We’re still hoping for a response from Comviva on the same. Readers will remember that the last such large deal struck was between OnMobile Global and Telefonica for the Latin American markets. A public listed entity, OnMobile had been gone to great lengths to share details of their deal:

– OnMobile Says Telefonica 5 Year Contract Begins Q1 2010; 23 Services; Music Driven
– OnMobile Ties Up With Telefonica In Latin America; To Invest $50M; Market Data

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Chhota Comics Launched On Vodafone; License Or Purchase?

Nikhil Pahwa — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:47:43 +0000

Vodafone Essar has launched ‘Chhota Comics’, allowing users to subscribe to comics from Amar Chitra Katha (ACK), Raj Comics, Diamond Comics, Disney and Liquid comics, among others. Comics on Suppandi, Chacha Chaudhary, Mickey & Donald, Akbar Birbal, Winnie the Pooh, Hanuman & lots more are available. Now comics on mobile aren’t new: many years ago, Coruscant Tec had launched them as well, but what is new is perhaps the new-found enthusiasm among telecom operators to launch comics: like Bollywood based mobile games a few years ago. Airtel and Reliance have also recently launched Mobile Comics.

So how many people are buying comics voluntarily?

The Content & Its Pricing; License or Purchase?

According to the release, over 35 titles are made available at a rather high Rs. 2 per comic strip, or a more reasonable Rs. 15 per full length comic. It’s unfortunate that the content is valid for a period of 1 year only from the date of purchase: as a consumer, are you licensing the content for a year, or do you think you’re buying a mobile comic for perpetuity. In this context, do read this article: I Bought a CD, not a Licensing Agreement. My take: when I buy a comic, I buy to own it. Just because the digital medium allows licensing of digital content, it doesn’t mean I signed up to “license” it.

Vodafone subscribers can SMS the keyword comic to 111 to receive a WAP push for downloading the comic application from Zero Sum Wireless, or download it via Vodafone Live, the telcos on-deck WAP portal. One of the issues appears to be that the is only streamed to the handset, hence will require continuous GPRS connectivity. However, on a positive note for content owners, this ensures that the content isn’t pirated.

The App

“Chhota Comics” tries to provide a much richer user experience, allowing readers to pan, zoom, and interestingly enough, even incorporating background sounds and phone vibrations according for different situations in the comic; hopefully no electric shocks if a character in the comic is stuck by lightening. In a particular frame, if three characters comment, then in an animated manner, the thought bubbles are shown one by one: makes for much easier reading; sub-titles can also be added if needed.

From a business standpoint, according to Zero Sum, the Java based application has a built in content catalog to enable new content discovery and encourage repeat purchase, and embedded URLs to assist in cross-selling wallpapers, animations and games while reading the comic.

Videocon Launches GSM Service In Coimbatore, Finally!

Diwaskar Chettri — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:26:49 +0000

Videocon has become 14th telecom operator to launch GSM services in the crowded Indian market. The service, branded as Videocon Mobile Services (and not Datacom) is live in Coimbatore. Videocon has licenses for operations in 21 circles. New connections will be made at Videocon Mobile Shop, ‘Next’ showroon and Planet M Showrooms.

We called up the customer care number for Videocon Mobile Services at 09080012345, and though no automated details for plans were availabe, the Coimbatore launch was confirmed. No post-paid plans are available yet.

The company has launched with a base pre paid plan, wherein the SIM will cost Rs. 49, and has talk time value of Rs 5. Local calls within the Videocon network and others will cost Re. 1 per minute; STD calls will be charged Rs 1.50 per minute. This is valid only till the first recharge, which costs Rs 31 to activate per second billing, and gives the subscriber an additional Rs. 75 bonus over and above the recharge value of Rs 25. The rate isn’t unexpected: Re. 0.1 per second, including while roaming. SMS charges for local, national and international are Re. 1, Rs. 1.50 and Rs. 5 respectively. Details for further recharges were unavailable.

Interestingly, all new Videocon connections come with lifetime validity. To maintain lifetime validity a subscriber has to have done a cumulative recharge of at least Rs 200 every six months.

The Dhoot family, which owns the Videocon Group, and original promoter Mahendra Nahata had received the license under Datacom three years back but problems between the owners had stalled the launch of the service. It was recently reported that Nahata had exited the venture, and Datacom had been renamed Videocon Telecommunications.

Videocom Mobile Services has an infrastructure sharing agreement with Tata Teleservices and tower sharing deal worth $400 million with Aircel. It also has a range of mobile handsets. The new entrant seems to be testing the waters with a launch only in Coimbatore. Uninor had launched its services in December in 7 circles simultaneously.

Now since Videocon has ironed out its wrinkles and joined the fray, we wonder whether they will bid for 3G Spectrum as well?

(Update: had mistakenly referred to Videocon as Vodafone; corrected now)

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Mobile Apps: Downloads In Asia Expected To Grow…Revenue?

Diwaskar Chettri — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:37:37 +0000

There were 7 billion mobile application downloads in 2009, and this is set to increase at a Compounded Annual Gross Rate (CAGR) of 92 percent to 50 billion by 2012, according to a report by Chetan Sharma Consulting commissioned by applications retailer GetJar. Revenue from mobile apps, including from downloads, advertisements and virtual goods is expected to increase from $4.1 billion in 2009 to as much as $17.5 billion by 2012.

Asia: Share of Downloads vs Revenues

What’s interesting is that while 37 percent of an estimated total 7 billion global applications downloads in 2009 was from Asia, in terms of revenue, the contribution was rather low. It appears that in Asia, the freebie (or just the advertising supported model) is what is gaining traction. Expectedly, even as the number of application downloads for Asia grows, it is estimated that revenue share will not match up. Mobile advertising is expected to play a greater role in Asia.

China and India are identified as predominantly featurephone markets; in Asia overall 90 percent devices are featurephones. In these markets, where subscribers are mostly pre-paid, operators will have to offer more data plan choices to convert subscribers to data users. We’ve already seen that in India, with innovations in pricing in particular from Aircel and Tata Docomo.

The report warns that in Asian markets where the telecom operators keep 40-70 percent of the share, developers without big budgets will find it difficult to survive. Here in India we refer to it as the “VC Funded VAS Bubble”.

Much more to ponder over from the report. Download here.

P.s.: Methodology: This is based on inputs from over 20 players active in the global mobile apps ecosystem including operators, OEMs, analytics players, measurement companies, content providers and publishers, off deck storefronts, mobile advertising players, application developers, and aggregators. In terms of their methodology, they first estimated the total number of smartphone and featurephone users in five major regions (North America, Europe, South America, Asia, and Middle East and Africa). They looked at the active data subscribers on these devices who are actively downloading mobile apps, and then estimated the number of apps download/user/month by smartphone and featurephone platforms respectively. How they learnt of the number of active data subscribers in India is beyond me.

PayPal Needs To Comply With RBI Regulations By April 30th, 2010

Nikhil Pahwa — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:45:19 +0000

It isn’t over yet: If Paypal doesn’t satisfy the requirements put forth by the Reserve Bank of India April 30th 2010, their operations could be disrupted again, Jaimon Joseph writes on IBNLive Blogs, after having spoken to both PayPal and the RBI, that the banking regulator is keeping a watch on PayPal. They did allow the online payments company some leeway: by permitting them to honor all transactions done upto January this year, in order to prevent inconvenience customers. Of course, that may not go down well with those who received payments after January.

Unfortunately, Peer-to-peer payments remain disabled, and there still isn’t adequate clarity on what exactly PayPal needs change in order to comply with the RBI regulations. Joseph also examines issues with Paypal’s transfers – looking into exchange rates and the commissions. Do read.

Last month, PayPal had controversially begun reversing disbursals to Indian banks, after the RBI stepped in, concerned that they were operating as an unregistered money transfer company in India. From March 3rd, business transfers have been enabled as long as businesses specify a ‘Purpose Code’, and make available relevant documents for scrutiny if required. According to the Paypal, around 170,000 Indians regularly receive or send money abroad via PayPal, of 1.6 million Indians who have signed up for the service.

Will Unbundling BSNL’s Local Loop Truly Bring About A Broadband Revolution In India?

Nikhil Pahwa — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:21:52 +0000

I’ll believe it when I see it, but that it’s up for discussion again brings with it hope for broadband in India: Business Standard reports, quoting unnamed sources that BSNL is considering opening up its last mile to private players. This means that a private company can provide broadband connections to your home using BSNLs existing wireline connection to your home, without having to spend on laying a separate cable. One of the major issues is for private companies to seek a few thousand permissions (mild exaggeration) for digging roads for laying a separate cable, from the government, housing societies etc.

Is It Needed Anymore?

But is the last mile needed anymore? Three or four years ago, at the height of the telecom hype, this would probably have transformed broadband in India, but I’m not so sure if that is still the case. Telecom operators like Reliance Communications and Tata Indicom already provide Fixed WiMax broadband connections, and would they spend on upgrading the existing legacy copper infrastructure? India’s broadband growth has been snail-paced at best, adding between 150,000-200,000 per month on an average, while wireline connections have been declining. The country reported 36.76 Million at the end of January 2010, a keeping with the trend of a steady decline.

Of course, BSNL probably needs to cut costs and bring in the some money from it’s wireline business, given the loss that their “non-cellular’ business has incurred in the last fiscal:

Will The Franchise Model Work?

BSNL, according to the report, intends to appoint a franchisee for the broadband services. BSNL and MTNL have tried franchise models for IPTV and VoIP in India, but it’s appears to have been tightly controlled on the broadband side, and the service quality so poor that these are yet to take off.

I’ve struggled with MTNLs broadband connectivity for two weeks, and it’s taken over 40 phone calls to several people at MTNL for someone to look into the matter, and another few calls for it to be fixed. Managing customers, infrastructure and servers is not MTNLs strong point: I can vouch for that. I’m sceptical about whether a deal where BSNL manages the infrastructure and someone else manages the marketing and customer service, will work out.

We’ll keep an eye out for the exact structuring of the franchising agreement, if BSNL indeed plans to go through with it. In the meantime, curb your enthusiasm. I am.

What’s your take?

– BSNL Inflating Subscriber Numbers, Says Director: Report

Dow Jones Launches WSJ Mobile App On Airtel

Diwaskar Chettri — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 02:55:18 +0000

Dow Jones has launched The Wall Street Journal India Mobile application with Indian telco Bharti Airtel, giving users access to the latest international and Indian financial and business news from The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. For now, the app is available exclusively to Airtel mobile customers, and while the basic content is free, users need to subscribe to premium content at Rs. 99 per month.

The Wall Street Journal India also operates on the freemium model, with some content free, and some behind a pay-wall. Mitya New, MD, Dow Jones India declined to disclose to MediaNama the number of premium subscribers that they have online. One difference, New said, between the WSJ Mobile Reader and this app, is that the application is more focused on Indian content. It’s powered by July Systems, and is supported by most BlackBerry devices, Nokia N Series, E Series and most Nokia Smartphones. New said that there would look to deploy the application with other telecom operators as well.

Premium content will include full access to all market-related live commentary, company, mutual fund, IPO and commodity databases, charting and personalized tools like the portfolio tracker and watchlist. The premium service also includes search and tracking of over 8,000 companies, mutual funds and IPOs over the last three years with customized chart views. Other features include videos and podcasts on global news, technology trends and complete page personalization option.

The WSJ application is free to download on mobile either through SMS, Airtel’s App Central, Airtel Live or at http://www.wsj.com/indiamobile. Once downloaded users get acces to financial and business news, real time upodates, latest headlines, market commentary and data. The app will also include access to jobs from Naukri.com and hotel deals from online travel agency Yatra.com.

State Bank Of India & SREI Sahaj Tie-Up For Rural eBanking

Diwaskar Chettri — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:48:46 +0000

State Bank of India has tied up with SREI Sahaj, a subsidiary of Srei Infrastructure that operates several broadband enabled Common Service Centers in India, in the states of West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and Tamil Nadu. The banking services in rural areas will be provided through Sahaj Rural Development Foundation (SRDF), and possibly at the 16,000 CSCs that SREI claims to have set up.

Last month, SBI tied up with Airtel and BSNL to launch mobile money transfer in India. 67.28 percent of its total 12,207 branches are present in rural and semi urban areas and the bank has plans to launch 1200 biometric ATMs in rural areas. MediaNama readers might recall that in December, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had allowed “business correspondents” to provide banking services, in order to facilitate the opening of more bank accounts, and bring more and more people into the banking ecosystem.

Sahaj CSC Services

Sahaj also intends to offer other services like Insurance, Mutual Funds and other financial products as per guidelines laid down by regulatory bodies. Business Correspondents are also allowed to disburse small value credit, recover principal and collect interest, collect small value deposits, sell micro insurance, mutual fund products, pension products, and receive and deliver small value remittances.

At present 32 services are available at Sahaj CSCs including Internet, e-Learning, electric bill collection, BSNL bill collection, mobile top ups, railway reservation, LIC premium collection, rural-job portal (Chaakri), e-Commerce, matrimonial, distance education etc.

61 percent of the rural Indian population do not have access to banks and its the worst in the North-Eastern and Eastern regions of the country. The partnership will allow the poor especially farmers to have bank accounts, credit history and insurance which will help them to access capital and receive disbursements from the Government directly, without intermediaries.

Recently the Agriculture Department of Andhra Pradesh launched a pilot programme for providing online services to farmers through the CSCs.

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Indiatimes Buys Back Sequoia Capital Stake

Nikhil Pahwa — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:16:18 +0000

MediaNama had learnt from sources that Times Internet Limited (Indiatimes) has bought back Seqioua Capital India’s stake in the company. When contacted, Indiatimes CEO Rishi Khiani declined to confirm or deny the development, saying repeatedly “No confirmation and no comment.” Note that there was no denial either. Sequoia Capital India has also declined to comment. Please note that Times Internet Limited is no longer listed as one of Sequoia Capital’s India investments.

On 3rd October 2005, Indiatimes had issued Sequoia Capital India Investments Holdings II, 2,396,000 “Participatory Optionally Convertible Preference Shares” of Rs. 10 per share at a premium of Rs. 121.98 per share. At that time, this amounted to around $7 million. These shares were mandatorily convertible into equity shares latest by 26th October 2012, and could be redeemed by Sequoia Capital at any time after 26th October 2009. Sequoia Capital may have exercised that right, and redeemed the shares.

A lot has changed at Indiatimes since the day that WestBridge Capital Partners (which later merged with Sequoia Capital) invested in the company. At that time, particularly given Rediff’s NADSAQ listing and performance – a market cap of around $400 million, the company looked set for an IPO. Indiatimes was perceived to be the largest Indian portal, bigger than Rediff. Early in 2006, Dinesh Wadhawan was brought in as MD & CEO, having been part of the executive team that Vicinity Corporation public on NASDAQ. Wadhawan resigned earlier last year.

Now there’s a new management in place, with former Web18 COO Rishi Khiani at the helm, and apparently a new plan. From what we’ve heard from sources, there’s a significant push centered around leveraging the Times of India group’s content better, particularly on the mobile.
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Qualcomm To Bid For India’s Wireless Broadband Spectrum In Upcoming Auction

Nikhil Pahwa — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:05:19 +0000

So the first hat, it seems, is in the ring.

Qualcomm has announced that they’ve filed an application to bid in India’s upcoming 3G and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) auction, specifically seeking to acquire spectrum in the 2.3 GHz band. India is expected to auction 3G spectrum on the 9th of April 2010, and the BWA auction is expected to begin two days after the 3G auction ends. What’s most interesting about this bid, though, is what Qualcomm intends to do if it is able to acquire spectrum:

The telecom infrastructure giant plans to attract Indian (telecom operator) partners after completion of the auction, form a venture in line with India’s Foreign Direct Investment regulations, deploy infrastructure, and then exit “in due course” once the service is rolled out. It is not Qualcomm’s intent to get into the telecom operator business, and this announcement appears to be as much a statement of intent, as a call out to potential partners. Qualcomm’s plan is essentially to speed up the deployment of TD-LTE infrastructure, a technology compatible with 3G WCDMA/HSDPA and EVDO.

Related:

– Update: India’s 3G Auction: Expect Three Operators; Launch Only After September
– India’s 3G Auction On 9th April 2010; Here We Go Again
– Editorial: How Telecom Operators In India Should Approach 3G
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