The amount of stake sold to Argonaut has not been disclosed. eYantra had previously raised funds in October 2008: a Series A round of $3.1 million from Ventureast Proactive and Argonaut, for 18 percent stake in the company. Assuming that they have spent all of that, the burn rate is $197,750 per month. The company had said that then that it would utilize the funding to develop its consumer business at Foostor.com to make it into a B2C business. eYantra also owns a corporate gifting solutions portal called logoprint.in, which allows corporates to buy customized, company branded gifts for their employees.

In 2009 eYantra 250 employees strong and had recorded a turover of around Rs 350 million for the FY 2009. Besides Argonaut and Ventureast, Times Private BCCL also holds a minority stake eYantra.

Related:
–eYantra Sells 18% Stake For $3.1 Million To Ventureast, Argonaut; To Develop Foostor.com

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• Surfing and Viewing agriculture information for an hour will cost Rs 10. Thats what most cyber cafes’ charge, where is the subsidy or why charge at all?
• Printing per page will cost Rs 2, as high, if not more, than some cybercafes.
• Viewing video uing CD will cost farmers Rs 10 per hour and requesting for online Soil Health Card will cost Rs 5.
• Sending five questions through net will attract a fee of Rs 5
• We’re not sure of what this means, but “sending a one sentence query will cost Rs 2.”

Several CSCs Not Functional Anymore; SWAN, e-Districts Behind Schedule

What’s really not funny is this statement that the Government is trying to ensure that there’s telecom and broadband in every village: the CSC rollout appears to be faltering: As of February 28, 2010, 561 out of the 1159 Common Service Centres are still non-operational in Haryana. The CSCs have been non-functional from January. Similarly due to cancellation of contract 133 CSCS are non operational in Tripura.

Out of the 14 states for the e-district project, work is on schedule only in Assam but data digitization is still in progress and a state wide rollout is yet to take off. For the remaining 13 work is behind schedule or in progress at various phases.

Only 2 states Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh have completed the State Wide Area Network (SWAN) implementation since the end of January taking the total to 17. Implementation in Assam, Bihar, Maharashtra and Orissa are behind the deadline.

Progress:

A total of 71,078 CSCs have been rolled out in 28 States out of the total 122,981. 27,376 online monitoring tool has been installed across 24 states. In Punjab the bid process is underway, MSA signing is pending at state level for Arunachal Pradesh, Request For Proposal / Tender (RFP) is  ready for issuance in Nadaman & Nicobar and implementation in Lakshwadeep, Daman & Diu and Darda & Nagar Haveli are under discussion.

In 2008-09, a total fund of Rs 560.46 million  and Rs 231.75 million has been issued by the Department of Information Technology (DIT) and as Additional Central Allocation (ACA) respectively for the CSC implementation. CSCs are Internet connected kiosks set up in villages that allow citizens to book tickets, apply for jobs, search for market information on crops and sell their produce. The CSC rollout is a part of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Plan(NREGA).

DIT has released funds worth Rs 570.8 million  and Rs 520.8 million has been released as ACA for SWAN implementation .

There seems to be some progress in the SDC implementation. A total of 7 states have contracts signed and work orders issued, an addition of 4 namely, Maharashtra, Sikkim, Nagaland and Rajasthan since mid January. These states have a deadline of July to August 2010 for implementation.  A total of Rs 407.9 million  and Rs 1.2 billion has been released by DIT and ACA respectively for the project.

Download:

Related:

–694 CSCs Non Operational, 8 States Get SWANs
–Lack Of Funds Stalls National E-Governance Projects
–India Adds 12.05M Connections In June; E-Governance Roll Outs Delayed
–Internet CSC Rollout Complete In Jharkhand, Haryana, Sikkim; Long Way To Go

Think you’ve missed something important? Read MediaNama Editors’ Picks here

Speaking at the launch, Airtel CEO (India & South Asia) Sanjay Kapoor said that this is a long term play, and company expects that in about 4-5 year time, this will be anywhere between Rs. 300-400 crores business.

“This is a large media exchange, agnostic to which screen, and which part of the screen you’re talking about,” he said, adding that  ”We’re not trying to control here. We’re the enablers, the platform. The timing of the content, and what is going to be sent to each screen is going to be controlled by the producer. Anyone can create content and piggyback on the exchange,” he said.

To Start With B2B, Digital Cinema

Airtel is going to begin with a B2B focus, and the low hanging fruit in this space is evidently the B2B digital cinema distribution which has been attempted previously, but clearly not at this scale. “There are more than 16,000 cinema screens operating in India, and they’ve being digitized. Serving content digitally is a great opportunity – starting from B2B and then moving to B2C,” Rajan Swaroop, Executive Director (Enterprise Services) for Airtel said.

Swaroop said that they see the B2C space more opening up in the 12-18 months. “How do we reach a film in 15 languages across 2000-5000 theatres? With a platform like this, we’re in a position to get the processing and convert to a regional format in no time, and reach these theaters almost instantly. The potential for the content owners becomes multi-fold.”

As “partners” Airtel is targeting publishers, processors, animation companies, gaming companies, advertising and media houses.

Viability? Previous Attempts At Digital Cinema Distribution Struggled

However, the digital cinema distribution business hasn’t exactly flourished in India over the past two years: Pyramid Saimira has shuttered their digital cinema distribution business. UFO Moviez and Adlabs currently have digital cinema distribution businesses. Swaroop said that they will partner with the likes of UFO Moviez and Adlabs. Where Airtel has an advantage is that while the other companies lease bandwidth for distribution, Airtel actually owns it. Airtel is also also looking to leverage their global pipes for international distribution.

On the viability of the business model, Kapoor said that the whole business case is in “juicing our existing assets. For us, it’s incremental investment. The reach that we have cannot be paralleled by local companies; we’re uniquely poised.”

In this context, MediaNama readers might remember that just last month, Airtel had announced an agreement with Limelight Networks for content delivery network, which will allow the company to efficiently leverage content delivery in India and internationally.

Related:

– Bharti Airtel Partners With Limelight Networks For CDN Services
– Pyramid Saimira Winds Up Film Distribution In India; Defers Reel Acquisition
– Adlabs Gets Into The Digital Cinema Business
– Bharti Airtel Partners With Limelight Networks For CDN Services

Grameenphone has a base of 23 million telephone connections out of a total of 50 million telephone connections (wireless and fixed) in the country. Telenor owns 55.8 percent in the Bangladeshi telecom operator.

The service has been launched in collaboration with Computer Network Systems (CNS) Limited, the Bangladeshi equivalent of IRCTC, which took over the computerized reservation and ticketing system of Bangladesh Railway in 2007.

Mobile ticketing service will initially be offered for all Inter-city trains starting from Dhaka Kamlapur, Dhaka Airport and Chittagong stations, and gradually all other intercity trains will be included under this service. To book a ticket users will have to access a menu from his mobile phone and feed in the travelling information. After that the user can choose to either book the tickets for a stipulated time period or purchase immediately if the seats are available. A digital train ticket number will be sent to his mobile via SMS which can be used to obtain a paper-based ticket from the train station at the time of travel. A service fee of BDT 20 per seat will be charged along with the ticket cost.

According to The Daily Star, an average of about 53.8 million passengers avail railway service in a year in Bangladesh. Over 40,000 people travel to and from Dhaka through Kamalapur Railway Station each day.

Related:

–Budget 2010: IRCTC Charges Reduced; E-Ticket Vans; SMS
–130% Rise In Online Ticket Sales For IRCTC In 2008-2009

Frankly, I’m tempted to switch: just got my RCOM data card bill last night, it’s a connection I rarely use, since there’s broadband + WiFi at home and in the office, and I’m paying Rs. 650 for a 1 GB/month plan. For the same plan with BSNL, I would be paying less than half that much, at Rs. 299.

Does BSNL have excessive under-utilized 3G bandwidth to spare? Sure looks like it: BSNL appears to be encouraging users to take the unlimited plan, which will cost Rs. 750 per month for users who sign up until the end of March 2010, after which it will increase to Rs. 999 per month. In case of the other EVDO service providers, unlimited isn’t really unlimited: there’s an unfair “Fair Usage” clause.

Another thing to keep in mind is the customer care: I’ve been using my Reliance Broadband Data card since yesterday because my MTNL broadband connections have been iffy for four days, and no one’s come to fix it. Thus I’m sceptical about the customer care offered by PSUs. Tata Photon was never an option for me, after my horrendous experience with their (lack of) customer care a few years ago. In contrast, in three years, I’ve never once needed assistance with the RCOM data card. Maybe they’ll lower rates too. (Hint, hint)

Related:

– MTS Launches 3.1 Mbps EVDO Services; Per Second Billing In Delhi
– Virgin’s New Data Card: Competition & Tata Indicom
– RCOM Launches Netconnect Broadband Plus With Upto 3.1 Mbps Wireless Download Speed; 3G, WiMAX?

Earlier: Though ring back tones are extremely popular in India, it is quite rare that you hear an advertisement as a ringback tone – the only time we can think of is when we call Pizza Hut. A whitepaper has been put together by members of the Mobile Marketing Association on how ringback tones have been harvested as a marketing channel.

Amongst the launches in Asia, two from India are in the whitepaper: Vodafone Essar India’s ‘adRBT’ and Bharti Airtel’s ‘Hello Tunes Lite’. Vodafone trialled a model that allowed customers to chose a piece of music that would play to 80% of their callers, while the rest 20% would hear an audio ad. Other Asian deployments include Turkcell Turkey’s ‘Tonla Kazan’, KTF South Korea’s ‘Save-Ring’ and China Mobile’s ‘Zhao Cai Ling’.

But Have You Heard An AdRBT Yet?

For those of you in India – have you heard an AdRBT yet? Claims of deployments are high, but we have not seen the adoption of advertisements as ring back tones en masse. Last year in August, OnMobile Global had claimed that AdRBT had been launched in 80% of Vodafone circles in India, with 100,000 subscribers. In the White Paper, Vinay Kumar, CEO of StratosHear Technologies has said that of the 500 million mobile users in India, a rather large 20 percent use RBT, but hasn’t disclosed the number of AdRBT users.

It appears from the study that Action Shoes used AdRBT to target areas where conventional media does not reach. We’ve requested the MMA for audio samples. The cases:

Action Shoes

According to the case study, this campaign, called “School Time” was held in July 2009, the back-to-school season. Beginning with Karnataka, which is a key market for shoe retailer Action Shoes, the ad was then taken to Delhi and Mumbai where the company wanted to create more brand recall for its School Time range of shoes. While no information has been shared about how the campaign was targeted – no point in someone like me being made to hear a School Time advertisement – it does claim that over a month, they registered 84,000 ad impressions. There was also an unexpectedly high average call pick-up time of 15.7 seconds.

Star Plus

In December 2009, broadcaster Star Plus used ad-RBTs to build-up momentum for its TV show ‘Amul Music Ka Maha Muqqabla’. Indian singers such as Mika Singh, Himesh Reshamiya, Shankar Mahadevan, Shreya Ghoshal and Shaan – put together six, 12-second long jingles. The campaign covered Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkatta, Punjab, Haryana, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh and claims to have recorded 800,000 impressions. The targeting was regional, but it’s not clear whether demographic segmentation was provided: telco’s have that data, don’t they? The average call pick-up time was again rather high – 16.1 seconds.

Duration

The whitepaper notes that the duration of a typical ring‐back tone should be 30 seconds, and the most important bit of the ad should be arranged at the beginning of the message – in the first five and next seven seconds – as it is most likely to be heard by inbound callers.

Pricing, User Rewards & Revenue Share?

Now what the case studies do not share are how the inventory was priced, and what incentives were provided to consumers to try this service out. Also, the revenue share between telecom operators and service providers has not been mentioned. Back in August 2008, OnMobile CTO Mouli Raman had said that the revenue share from Ad RBT for OnMobile would be 25-30%. Some details from the white paper prepared by the MMA:

Pricing Methods for the Ad RBT:

• Cost Per Transmission (CPT or CPL): The advertiser pays an amount for each time an advertising message is played to an inbound caller.
• Cost Per Action (CPA): The advertiser pays an amount for each time a response is registered. This could be either a request for more information or for a callback.
• Subscription Pricing: Advertisers pay the operator for each participant in the AdRBT program
• Network Pricing (CPM): Advertisers pay a CPM rate based on projected transmissions and the total size of the network.

User Compensations:

Users can be offered free minutes/ SMSs/ ring‐back tones, or it could be in the form of donation to charity, a downloadable application or WAP based benefit programs. For example, Airtel only makes every 4th call an advertisement for a product and offers a 50% discount on monthly subscription (to Hello Tunes) for playing an ad on your phone.

Those opting into the Ad‐RBT service must have the option to stop the service at any time; end‐users who sign up to the service should be given an opt-out list to selecting contacts who will not hear the Ad‐RBT. Vodafone clearly states however that this is not offered in its service, and the tone is brusque, “User shall have no choice of AdRBT and Vodafone Essar shall not entertain any such request of the User in this respect.”

Corrigendum: Vinay Kumar, CEO of Stratoshear, informs us that AdRBT on Airtel was launched by Stratoshear. We had incorrectly attributed that service to OnMobile. Our apologies.

Related
– Q1-10 Call: OnMobile Global: TRAI Impact; AdRBT 100k Subs; Comviva; Social Phone Backup
– Q209 Call: OnMobile Says Deployments Have Slowed; Telisma Vs Nuance; AdRBT
– Q1-09 Call: OnMobile Partners With Vodafone, GroupM For Ad Ring Back Tones; Local Advertising, CPC Model, 25-30 Pc Revenue Share

There’s been talk of plans to divest stake in public sector companies: according to sources quoted in the report, the Telecom Ministry has approved the sale of 10 percent stake in BSNL. (Read more at  Bloomberg UTV)

However, keep in mind that BSNL is also mired in controversy regarding its cancelled tender and allegations of inflation of subscriber numbers. The company’s fixed line business also continues to lose money.

Tata Teleservices Has Launched Tata Photon+ In Pune

Tata Teleservices Maharashtra Limited has launched its wireless data card Tata Photon+ in Pune. This is the sixth launch after the device was launched in Mumbai, Nagpur, Nashik, Kolhapur and Goa and costs Rs 2299.

TTML Readies $1.9 Billion For 3G

Tata Teleservices Maharashtra Limited is planning on a war chest of $1.9 billion for the upcoming 3G spectrum auction and to upgrade its network in Mumbai, Maharashtra and Goa circle, according to sources.  (Read more at The Economic Times)

Singtel Ties-Up With YOU Broadband For Broadband Services

SingTel has partnered with Citigroup owned YOU Broadband to provide broadband services and international connectivity to small and medium sized businesses in India.  Last year Singtel had bagged licenses for National Long Distance and International Long Distance services in India. (Read more at Business Line)

Press Council Of India Forms Sub-Committee To Deal With ‘Paid News Syndrome’

In a response to Sitaram Yechury’s Calling Attention Notice in the Rajya Sabha with regard to the issue of Paid News, I&B Minister Ambika Soni, among other things, has said that the Press Council of India has constituted a Sub-Committee to consider this issue and collect evidence from stakeholders, including the Election Commission of India