Vijay enthralled the audience with a speech on “Potential Business Partners” which included the following key points:

• Application developers evolve by deciding how to make an application as per the market needs. But what must be noted is that very few go for actual research
• The consumers are unaware of what they need
• Amount of resource needed is inversely proportional to the time required in the development process
• The application developer should always be on the lookout for long term benefits and opportunities
• Don’t add one feature and give it to the market, some body else might be doing the same strategic move
• For resource optimization, emulate consumers’ lives. Your mobile application will not grow if the developer doesn’t attempt to understand the consumer’s mind
• If you are not the best consumer of your product, you will not be successful

• Don’t create applications that are ”happening” now, as GYM, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft will definitely plan to venture into them
• Success of any application should be rated on consumer happiness, which should be determined by the change brought about in the lives of number of consumers, and also how many consumers can’t live without it. This way the consumer will appreciate the technology more
• India boasts of more than 300 million unique mobile users who demand high value for money
• Indians download only free apps
• If the developers make apps for any smart phones, it’s not reaching out to the Indian audience
• Indian app is in the cloud (network operator), i.e. owned, ruled, kept and locked by the network operator
• If your app is based on cloud, that can be a great asset
• The consumer population is comprised of 2% of people who have subscribed and later actually bothered about the service
• All the revenue in India is limited to entertainment

• Don’t thrive in only one industry. Go beyond the market and be sincere to the person who is your target market
• Cloud is not a great a success story. Not a great environment for innovation
• India is not a device market. A device eco system has more challenges
• There are so many OSS available that it becomes quite confusing to choose the correct route
• Start by deciding and blueprinting about the segment and ends in revenue
• We Indians are a great Service industry but can we be known as a great Product industry?
• Lastly, “Does the customer like it AND pay for it?” That is the question we should ask ourselves.

Our persisting efforts behind making Dakia possible attained recognition when it was announced as one of the winners of the big night. Dakia is a voice based multi-lingual mobile application for the aggregation and dissemination of community centric information in rural areas, irrespective of the literacy levels of the user. It is meant to empower the rural population by being informed about major issues like impending power cuts, weather reports, crop diseases and treatments, new market prices and general welfare, which in turn affect their daily lives.

As Vijay puts it in an earlier interview published on Medianama:

“We have an application called Dakiya. You can’t sell SMS in the rural market – even Hindi is non-native. You have to have a vernacular application, and vernacular in text does not exist. I don’t think Rural VAS is limited to Mandi Rates. We built up a community of villagers, where a few are authorized to pass the messages. Rural requires rural content, which we sitting here cannot generate.

A sarpanch (village head) will publish a message in their local language, and it gets broadcast to the group. This is on voice – so it breaks across the barrier of SMS. We’ve seen a couple of thousand messages a month from a village, like information on power cuts, crop information, local initiatives. It is democratization of content. Interestingly, a consumer doesn’t have to pay anything, because it is included in their monthly rental. These are the kind of applications that work for the masses.”

Image Source: Neelesh Misra’s blog

The telecom operator is now going back to the whiteboard and saying what we could do for the consumer.”

When Shilpa enquired about the framework and logistics of the Mobility Fund and the audience it is aiming at, Vijay began talking passionately about the present vivaciousness building up in the Indian mobile market due to the rise in the entrepreneurial latent potential.

“This is the time for entrepreneurs. This is the time for mobile consumers of India to experience the next set of services, which requires many more companies to come and innovate together.” Keeping in mind the kind of skills people can generate with market access, operating principles, learnings, and add to that the necessary capital a Fund can offer, stepping foot in the industry becomes easier for the new start ups.

Vijay was at his emphatic best when Shilpa mischievously made a mention about many companies shutting down due to a lack of entrepreneurial culture in our country.

“Telecom has taken off. Telecom has potential and telecom has success stories for companies to sustain. I have a lot of hope, I would not say as a hope; I see companies coming up to us and we’ve seen worthwhile business cases which are worth funding and investing. So this is not like internet. It is like a telecom base where we’re the king. We’re telling the world how it is to be done.”

Have a look at the video:

Here’s a rundown for those of you who still aren’t plugged in to what the Fund is all about:

• One97 has teamed up with SAIF Partners for a $100-million fund to support young visionaries by offering resources and mentoring along with treasures of experience and wisdom
• The company earlier seeded four startups from its balance sheet
• Among them are Oorja Mobile Services (mobile customer analytics) and Singapore’s TenCube, which develops smartphone security technology

As Vijay unravels in the BW story,

“There is certainly a corporate bias. We could develop new technologies and products internally, but younger firms are more on the edge, their passion is higher and one can get to market faster… We realized from those experiences that we could access most firms faster if we had a venture capital fund.”

With the insurgence of 3G and the mobile VAS industry booming at great speed, this ecosystem is only going to grow from strength to strength.

• Vijay is moderating a session on Mobile Marketing at the IAMAI conference – Free for SME’s. on 6th July 2010 at Habitat Center, ND. Event details here (http://ievents.iamai.in/ict4sme/agenda.php).
• VAS Asia 2010 is scheduled for 9th July 2010 at Le Meridian, New Delhi. Vijay Shekhar Sharma of One97 Communications is scheduled to speak at the event.
• One97 Communications is partnering Mobile Monday – to be held on 17th July 2010 at One97 office in Noida. The event link is here (http://momodelhi10.eventbrite.com/).

Journalists, bloggers, media persons looking to connect at any of the events, please leave us a message on this blog/ mail – talk2one97@one97.net or leave a message at our twitter handle @One97.

May you have an exciting time in the weeks ahead, a bit like what we are feeling at the moment.

Since there are a few discrepancies in some stories being circulated in some sections of the media.  Here is the link to the official release.

http://businesswireindia.com/PressRelease.asp?b2mid=23046

The total allocation of  USD 100 million has been made towards the Mobility Initiative and not Rs 500 crore as being quoted in some places.

Regarding the One97 tenCube transaction, we suggest anyone who wishes to know details of the transaction goes through the DRHP filed with SEBI. The document also shares all relevant business information that one may want to read.

The link is here http://www.sebi.gov.in/dp/one97draft.pdf

If you are a journalist, tracking the sector or have any questions for us, write to us at talk2one97@one97.net, the One97 team will be happy to talk to you.

Cheers