Our less than a month old baby, the One97 Mobility Fund has been able to garner media attention with ease. India’s renowned weekly business magazine, Businessworld recently commented on the efforts by One97 and other established mobile VAS companies that are giving a leg-up to young entrepreneurs wanting to fulfill their ambitions in our mobile ki duniya. (more…)
From one page newspapers and theatre to… silent movies to… television to… cable to… internet content on ones fingertips the media has gone through a rapid evolution. We talk about the shrinking global village but the true potential of media and its reach is yet to be unleashed. We have barely scratched the surface of Fourth screen – The Mobile (for the uninitiated the first three screens are Silver screen, TV screen and Computer screen), it is perhaps the most ubiquitous of screens in our lives today.
Going by the mobile penetration level India is perfectly poised to leapfrog the internet revolution to land directly into the mobile broadband revolution. It has already begun with the fast changes on all fronts of digital media including improvement in handset features, network bandwidth and quality & variety of content. Mobile has fast evolved from just being a device to talk to a centerpiece of our lives. Users are now looking for varieties of content delivered on the screen which is always there with them.
Traditionally, VAS business in the country has been driven by the ABC genres which are Astrology, Bollywood and Cricket. The first wave of applications was focused on ABC since the consumers were exploring mobile as a medium and were getting used to it. In the first wave of mobile VAS, service providers could get away with sending the same content to the large and varied Indian population e.g. Bollywood content to every user whether he is in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat or Bihar or Delhi.
Demand patterns in India are however changing and we are already seeing a silent shift. With the users becoming savvier and more comfortable in accessing content on the mobile, they have started looking for content more specific to their taste and their needs.Further, with the addition of millions of customers from the semi-urban and rural areas, demand for differentiated, long tail content is growing. And a lot of this demand will be on Voice and not an SMS or WAP as has been the traditional thought process. The majority of the Indian mobile consumers who are not English literate are much more comfortable to use voice-based content in their local language.
Yesterday my trip to NASSCOM to speak at Friday 2.0 did get me many new learnings.
First, NASSCOM – which sounds very formal – was truly very friendly, second people who came there were good fun and finally it was an evening well spent.
We have been trying the get the best talent in and around Delhi/NCR to One97.
I am firm believer that a company is worth the company (of people) it offers !
Seeing a good target group, I asked my audience on how to get great talent to join in. There were many suggestions including trying out startup lunch, trying some PR 2.0 and internal references.
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