Value added services beyond mobile phone in India ?
VAS services are typically popular in India for music related content. Ringtones and CRBT (Caller tunes) are very popular forms of the music content sold over mobile.
At other end sms based services became very popular with premium short code.
Being democratic country, people are naturally oriented towards voting!!
“दिल की बात बताने की आज़ादी…”
Probably the first era of KBC hosted by big B was the turning point in India’s television history. It combined two most powerful and popular mass-media mobile and television through reality shows, encouraging viewers to participate. And premium short code became necessity for all the television channels to create bridge for two-way communications. Tens of million messages are exchanged every day by viewers on P-A model (peer to application) through short code. Indeed it became big revenue channel for mobile operators. It is told during ‘Vote for Taj’ campaign run by DNA & NDTV more than 450mil messages are received within short span of 7-8 days…..
Well! Well!! This is not the end of story… "Picture तो अभी बाकी है मेरे दोस्त...” This is just the beginning of beginning, where collaboration and cooperation between teleco industries with entertainment (media) become necessity. Now there exists unique opportunity to look beyond mobile phone for VAS. Market is rightly poised to be grabbed by DTH and IPTV providers. (Is any VASP company listening! Virgin market!! Waiting to be conquered!!!- Define rules, define standards- DTH is catching up like wild fire!!!)
Why to type short code, keyword and then message or dial a voice portal number, just simple one ‘Click’ and register your opinion or vote for your favorite star.
“ सस्ता, सुलभ और सही रास्ता ”
Way forward T-commerce:-
Golden chance to offer customer- freedom and easier options.... Make services instant. Cash on impulsive reactions of customers for their desire to get heard, offer opinion, and their burning desire for consumption at its peak, cash on impulsive buying habits
Hit just then when iron is hot! “जब लोहा गरम हो तभी वार कर दो ...”
God of Digital World “Remote Control”:
Will become more powerful than mobile for consumption of VAS services
Can be programmed to become tool for catching expression, desire, wants
Will be best possible tool available for Market research.
Tool to hear Voice of Customer (VoC)
Can be PoS (Point of Sale) : additional sales channel
Can be integrated with payment gateway (will act as input device)
Are we entering in the era of T-commerce (TV-commerce) ?
Challenge:
1) DTH & IPTV penetration (currently low but surely catching up)
2) Extend to which trust creation for tele-brands: Brand building
3) Customer support back bone creation and supply chain integration
4) How well integration happens among customer profiling update, TV content and payment gateway options (any takers from social networking, search engine giants ???)
5) Can telecom operator along with VASP and media able to provide integrated, end-to-end tool to find customer needs- Profile mapping, convert needs into wants- interactive advertising and convert sales lead into actual sales?
6) Extend to which standards can be defined while writing codes for remote control functionalities for DTH services across providers (Currently in India, DTH payers are Big TV, Dish TV, Tata Sky, Sun TV)
7) How well Market research tools get embedded within content streaming on TV?
8) How to charge for VAS usage on DTH? Package offered, billing mechanism and ..
9) Last but not least service standardization for ease of integration with different aps
Your opinions/remarks/ feedback are highly solicited to complete this blog
