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Vas at $1.3 bn is growing at 60%

Indiantelevision.com Team

(12 July 2008 8:30 pm)

NEW DELHI: The Value-added services (Vas) market is pegged at $1.3 billion and is growing at a rate of 60 per cent. This was stated by Tata Teleservices GM Vas Zubin Jimmy Dubash at Vas Asia 2008.

“A slow down in texting has been observed as other Vas services have taken larger share of the pie. With a constant fall in the mobile handset prices, it's now important to take rich features to the masses. Some of the emerging revenue models are mobile advertising, commerce, subscriptions and off-deck services,” added Dubash.

Highlighting the fact that rural India will only invest in Vas if it changes its lifestyle, Dubash cited an example of a service that Tata has initiated in Tamil Nadu for fishermen where they get to know through the service details like the state of the weather and various other factors before going for their daily routine of catching fish.

Vas Asia 2008 held in the capital saw speakers lending their viewpoints on the current scenario of Vas and the key drivers of growth in future.

Speaking on the occasion Bharti Airtel senior VP-3G and network quality Abhay Sargaonkar said, "Vas is a regional feature related to nation’s character and industry environment. We need to develop ours. Whether its Hong Kong, Singapore or United Kingdom, each of the market has taken an approach based on the segment they operate. Even in India we need to do the same.”

Idea Cellular chief marketing officer Pradip Shrivastava emphasised that international mobile money transfer is a huge challenge as it provides quick and efficient service in India with millions of remittances to homes from migrant workers and white collar labour.

Vas is an important way of raising ARPUs (average revenue per user) for telcos. Said NMS Communications director sales – South East Asia Aveek Roy, “In order to stabilise ARPU, it’s necessary to compensate voice revenue decline with multimedia Vas expansion. To reduce churn one should choose sticky Vas option, use devices as attractions and reduce deployment and operating costs.”

In future it would be important to personalise content and the delivery mechanism, added Roy. Eventually operators will become both platform providers and service enablers.

Nuance Communication president Steve Chambers stressed on the use of voice as one the biggest tools to enter rural India. With voice enabled services, the concept of Vas will also work in the interiors of India because for such customers SMS is still a difficult task.

The challenge for Vas operators is to create local, relevant and innovative content.