(5 November 2007 6:30 pm)

BANGALORE: Low cost carrier (LCC) Air Deccan (Deccan) has tied up Oxigen to enable mobile users to avail of the ‘mFly Oxigen Cash Wallet’ to purchase air tickets for its flights starting today.

The mFly account is a prepaid user account which can be accessed through a mobile phone to book, pay for and generate Deccan tickets instantly.

India has an estimated base of 200 million mobile users currently, a figure that is estimated to go up to 500 million over the next few years so that almost one in two Indians will have a mobile connection.

The credit and debit card penetration is just 2 per cent and with the lack of availability of internet services in many rural areas, Deccan executive chairman G R Gopinath wants to leverage this huge potential for simplifying air travel.

With mFly Deccan passengers will be able to book tickets from practically any location and hence 'reduce the dependence on debit and credit cards and ticketing windows'.

The procedure involves a passenger registering on the Deccan website or calling up the Deccan call center in the city closest to him/her. The passenger receives a four digit pin code as an SMS, and then the passenger needs to charge/recharge/top up amount at any of the Oxigen outlets.

The passenger then checks flight availability and fare for the sector on the required date by sending an SMS. On receipt of the information, the passenger authorizes by SMS the payment for the ticket and receives an SMS which gives the confirmation and the PNR number.

At the same time an email is sent to the passengers registered email address with an e-ticket. The passenger can take a print out of the same or approach a Deccan counter for the ticket print out at the time of travel. The charges – Rs 3 per SMS and a service charge of Rs 50 per ticket.

At present only one ticket can be booked at a time, but group booking is on the cards according to Oxigen Chairman and managing director Pramod Saxena.

Besides air ticketing (for now only Deccan ticketing) Saxena is looking at other services such as railway booking, utility payments.

The primary focus of Oxigen in India has been on electronic recharge, subscription and payments over a virtual distribution.

Some of the services that can currently be paid for through Oxigen include DTH subscriptions for both Dishtv and Tatasky. Oxigen finished with about 6 million transactions last year with volumes of Rs 6 billion, and expects to up this number to 20 million transactions over the next two years. Oxigen expects to close this year with a volume of about Rs 10 billion.

Late last month, Air Deccan unveiled a new look – it is now just Deccan following its alliance with the UB group comprising a new Deccan livery of red and white colors with the Kingfisher logo. A campaign that is estimated to be about Rs 100 million, including a TVC which was made by Orchard through production house Think Pot is already on. According to industry sources, Deccan spends around Rs 150-200 million towards promotion and brand building.