MoMo December - Year-end roundup and predictions
Posted on | December 22, 2008 | No Comments
2008 is coming to a close and its time for a roundup as well as some predictions.
What were the most important developments in 2008 for Indian telecom?
What will be the key mobility trends in 2009?
Come and share your views at MoMo. In true BarCamp style of user generated conferences, the December 2008 event of Mobile Monday Mumbai will be an open participatory workshop.
Every speaker will get 5 minutes to talk about:
- what he/she thinks are the top 3 important events of 2008 and
- his/her top 3 predictions for 2009
To register as a speaker click here. Please fill your Name, Designation, Company, Website in the comments box there.
In case there are more speakers than available time, priority will be given to registered speakers and the order of arrival at the venue.
When:
Monday, 29th December 2008
6.30 pm - 9.00 pm
Where:
Cafe Coffee Day,
VS Khandekar Marg,
Near Railway Station,
Vile Parle East. Mumbai.
Directions: Google Maps link
For those who cannot attend in person:
- Please mail your points to mumbai@mobilemonday.in
- The session will be recored and a summary along with the key points will be put up online
MoMo October - Meetup with Ajit Jaokar
Posted on | October 27, 2008 | No Comments
On the eve of Diwali, we will have a meetup with Ajit Jaokar - who is in India for the festive season.
Where:
Cafe Coffee Day
Opposite St. Blaise’s Church
Amboli, Andheri West.
Directions:
Ten minutes from Andheri station; Off SV road
When:
Monday, 27th October
5.30pm onwards
About Ajit Jaokar:
Ajit Jaokar is the founder of the London based publishing company Futuretext, and is an expert on emerging Web and Mobile technologies. He chairs Oxford University’s Next generation mobile applications panel and conducts a course on Web 2.0 and User generated content at Oxford University.
His thinking is widely followed in the industry and his blog, The OpenGardensBlog, was recently rated a top 20 wireless blog worldwide by readers of ‘Fierce wireless‘. Currently, he plays an advisory role to a number of mobile start-ups in the UK and Scandinavia. He is also a member of the web2.0 workgroup.
He is the author of books, including Mobile Web 2.0 and OpenGardens. Two other books - Open Mobile and Social media advertising are being published in 2008.
His recent talks have included: Keynote at O Reilly Web20 expo(April 2007);MobileWorld Congress(2007 and 2008); Keynote at Java One (Ex -Motorola CTO Padmasree Warrior’s panel); European parliament - Brussels - (Electronic Internet Foundation) ; Stanford University’s Digital visions program; MIT Sloan; Fraunhofer FOKUS – Talk on
Mobility, Web 2.0 and Identity ; University of St. Gallen(Switzerland) – invited to speak about emerging trends in Mobility and new media; Mobile Web Strategies(partner event of CTIA in San Francisco)
MoMo September
Posted on | August 31, 2008 | No Comments
The September event of Mobile Monday Mumbai will be held on September 29th, 2008 on the topic “Mobile Payments and Commerce”.
Thanks to Atom Technologies for sponsoring the event and supporting the community.
Topic:
Mobile Payments and Commerce
The focus of this event will be to discuss IVR (Voice) based payment systems for mobile payments and commerce.
Agenda:
- Niranjan Gosavi, Chief Marketing Officer, Atom Technologies
- Group Discussion
- Dinner
When:
Monday, 29th Sep
6.45pm - 9.00pm
Where:
Pleateau Hall,
Club Peninsula,
Peninsula Corporate Park,
GR Kadam Marg,
Lower Parel, Mumbai.
Sponsor:
Click here to register.
Mobile Monday August - TRAI’s consultation paper on VAS
Posted on | August 16, 2008 | No Comments
The August event of Mobile Monday Mumbai will be held on August 18th, 2008 to discuss TRAI’s consultation paper on mobile value-added-services.
It is an important paper which will influence the regulator’s policy for the growth and regulation of the VAS industry. Some of the key issues that TRAI addressed in the consultation paper comprises the need to bring uniformity in the licensing conditions of mobile telecom operators, the need to include Value Added Service Providers under the licensing regime, importance of allocating short codes for value added services to guarantee uniformity amongst all the telecom operators and the obligation of protecting copyrights.
The paper can be downloaded from its website or read online here.
Topic:
TRAI’s consultation paper on VAS
Agenda:
- Panel discussion
- Arvind Rao, CEO, OnMobile
- Abhijit Saxena, CEO, Netcore
- Viren Popli, SVP & Head - Mobile Entertainment, Star India
- Raj Singh, MD, ActiveMedia
- Group Discussion
- Dinner
When:
Monday, 18th August
6.30pm - 9.00pm
Where:
Pleateau Hall,
Club Peninsula,
Peninsula Corporate Park,
GR Kadam Marg,
Lower Parel, Mumbai.
Click here to register.
Happy Independence Day!
Posted on | August 15, 2008 | No Comments
India is celebrating its 61st Independence Day today. Wishing all of you a great 15th August. Jai Hind!
Mobile Monday July - Mobile Web
Posted on | July 25, 2008 | No Comments
The July event of Mobile Monday Mumbai is on the topic “The Present and Future of the Mobile Web” and will be held on July 28th, 2008.
Thanks to Admob for sponsoring the event and supporting the community.
Topic:
The Present and Future of the Mobile Web
An interactive discussion on the mobile web in India, how devices like the iPhone will impact it, and the role the advertising will have in subsidizing applications on mobile web content.
Refer to this blog post by the speaker for a quick background.
Agenda:
- Zubair Jandali, Admob
- Group Discussion
- Dinner
When:
Monday, 28th July
6.30pm - 9.00pm
Where:
Pleateau Hall,
Club Peninsula,
Peninsula Corporate Park,
GR Kadam Marg,
Lower Parel, Mumbai.
Click here to register.
Sponsors:
Mobile Monday May - Enterprise VoIP
Posted on | May 26, 2008 | 1 Comment
The May event of Mobile Monday Mumbai is on the topic “Enterprise VoIP” and will be held on May 26th, 2008.
Topic:
Enterprise VoIP
In this session, we will learn how to setup a VoIP solution for your company using the open source telephony engine Asterisk.
This is the second event in the Asterisk series. Last month’s session was on how to create a VoiceSite using Asterisk.
Agenda:
- Hemanth Purohit, CEO, e-Horizons
- Group Discussion
- Dinner
When:
Monday, 26th May
7.00pm - 9.00pm
Where:
Netcore Solutions
4th Floor, Peninsula Chambers,
Peninsula Corporate Park,
GR Kadam Marg,
Lower Parel,
Mumbai - 400 013.
Click here to register.
Sponsors:
Venue: Netcore Solutions
Food & Beverages: e-Horizons
How to start a VoiceSite with Rs 1 lakh
Posted on | May 19, 2008 | 14 Comments
Sometimes introduction of a few pieces of detail makes you look at something you know - in a completely new way! Last month’s MoMo session changed the way I saw the Voice-based VAS opportunity.
The April event of Mobile Monday Mumbai was on the topic “Voice-based VAS”, in which we learnt how to create and run a voice-based content portal for mobile phones.
Voice portals are the equivalent of Web portals, giving access to content and information through the voice channel on a mobile phone or landline.
Some Voice-portals runs by Operators and Media companies are:
- 543212 of Airtel
- 56789 of Vodafone
- 51234 of Reliance
- 55456 of Idea
- 5057827 of Star TV
- 5052525 of Sony TV
- 5056882 of MTV
- 5057272 of Dainik Jagran
- 5056776 of Manorama Online
- 5055454 of Big FM
Website = Voicesite
One does not need VC funding to start a website today. Domain names and hosting are cheap, while designing and programming can be arranged in a bootstrap budget.
The economics of websites and Web 2.0 allowed proliferation of startups and encouraged innovation because it took little for a startup with an idea to do a beta launch, gather feedback from community and then invest in scale and product enhancements.
The lightbulb that got activated in my head was that - just like websites, Voicesite is “startup’s play”.
The VoiceSite - ApniAwaz 02218181818
Lets imagine a VoiceSite called ApniAwaz available on the number 02218181818.
Just like a radio channel has a brand name and frequency, a voicesite too has a brand name (ApniAwaz) and access number (02218181818).
So if a user comes to know of the voicesite, he will dial the number from his mobile/phone and listen to the content of his choice available on this voicesite.
So what does it take to start such a service.
The E1 line will allow 32 simultaneous incoming calls on a number. This E1 line will be connected to an Asterisk box which will provide a IVRS-based menu that can be programmed to serve content from the content server/space.
So what does it cost to start such a service.
- E1 line will cost around Rs 65,000 to acquire and roughly about Rs 8,000 per month to operate inbound calling
- Low-end server to host Asterisk and content should cost around Rs 35,000
- If you are a techie you can setup and program Asterisk
- Assuming audio content is available and IPR owned
Here is a diagram explaining the broad flow.
Apache = Asterisk
LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) played a crucial role in bringing down the cost of acquisition and operation of web servers. It brought the cost of websites within the reach of startups.
Without getting into the technical details, it would not be incorrect to say that the open source PBX & telephony engine Asterisk is to VoiceSites what the LAMP platform, (Apache in particular) was to websites.
Why the time for VoiceSites is now
Telephones have been around for more than a century. But the explosion of voice-based VAS and voice-portals happened only in the last 5 years or so. Why did it take that long for voice-based content services to take-off in India?
Some reasons that come to mind are to do with the readiness of the ecosystem and coming together of its entities.
- There was no critical mass i.e. it wasn’t a sizable market before 2002.
- Making STD or local calls was expensive for the user.
- Billing systems of telcos were not advanced enough to charge for non-voice calling items.
- Penetration of other payment instruments like credit/cash cards was low.
Three important hurdles have been removed from the growth path of Voicesites.
Potential market size as of May 2008 is around 275 million.
Open source technology like Asterisk makes it feasible for startups to launch innovative voice-based services. Therefore, lots of voicesites will get launched and the consumer will benefit from a choice of services at a competitive price.
Also, very recently most operators dropped national calling (STD) rates to Re 1. It means that by taking an E1 line from one telco, the service goes national. Users will access 02218181818 from anywhere in India and will only pay Re 1 per minute as call charges.
Business models
So how does one make money by running a voicesite? There are only two ways - advertiser pays or the user pays.
Charging the user for paid-content:
Credit card penetration is increasing at a good pace - India has close to 50 million credit card users. Cash-cards like ItzCash have also reached healthy usage levels. Therefore one way to charge users for paid content is via IVRS based online credit card or cash card charging. There are IVRS-based payment gateway companies ready to integrate with your voicesite.
Ad-funded model:
A voicesite can adopt the ad-funded model where the content is free and revenue is generated via audio-ads. Voicesites can be seen as on-demand radio. They are to radio what IPTV is to television. Therefore, radio advertisers would become the obvious target for advertising on voicesites.
But wait - voicesites are a better deal to advertisers than radio.
- Measurable ad delivery
- Captive listernership - user can’t fast forward or switch channel
- Actionable ads - advertiser can ask for response via IVRS
Voice portals are extending the reach and introducing new categories of users to value-added services, becasue they are multi-lingual and can be operated through IVRS or spoken commands (speech-recognition) without necessitating complicated downloads or settings.
The navigation menu, content and ads can be multi-lingual - a boon in a language rich country like India. Voicesites are handset agnostic and can be made available across operators on both CDMA & GSM networks. Even an illiterate rural user with the most basic handset can use the service.
The only limiting factor is the entrepreneur’s ability to think of innovative services!
So is there a catch? Am I missing something here? Would love to know from knowledgeable readers whether my lightbulb is faulty or is it indeed true that VoiceSites are an opportunity for startups and not just a realm of large companies.
Mobile Monday April - Voice based VAS
Posted on | April 27, 2008 | 1 Comment
The April event of Mobile Monday Mumbai is on the topic “Voice-based VAS” and will be held on April 28th, 2008.
Voice portals are the voice equivalent of Web Portals, giving access to content and information through spoken commands (speech-recognition) and touch tones by using IVRS.
Voice portals are extending the reach and introducing new categories of users to value-added services, since they are multi-lingual and can be operated through IVRS without complicated downloads or settings.
In this session of Mobile Monday, we will learn how to create and run a voice-based content portal for mobile phones.
Topic:
Voice-based VAS
Agenda:
- Mitul Limbani, CEO, Enterux Solutions
- Aditya Mhatre, Co-founder, Indicast
- Group Discussion
- Dinner
When:
Monday, 28th April
7.00pm - 9.00pm
Where:
Netcore Solutions
4th Floor, Peninsula Chambers,
Peninsula Corporate Park,
GR Kadam Marg,
Lower Parel,
Mumbai - 400 013.
Click here to register.
Thanks to Netcore Solutions for hosting the event at its office and supporting the community.
Mobile Monday March - Wireless Commerce
Posted on | March 30, 2008 | 1 Comment
Continuing the series on Mobile Payments and Commerce from last month, the March event of Mobile Monday Mumbai is on the topic “Wireless Commerce” and will be held on March 31st, 2008.
Thanks to PayMate for sponsoring the event and supporting the community.
Topic:
Wireles Commerce
Agenda:
- Akshay Sharma, AVP, Marketing & Brand Development, PayMate India
- Vishal Gupta, VP - Program Management, ClearTrip
- Saurabh Kanwar, VP - Content & Communication, Channel V
- Group Discussion
- Dinner
When:
Monday, 31st March
6.30pm - 9.30pm
Where:
Grapeviine
Club Peninsula,
Peninsula Corporate Park,
GR Kadam Marg,
Lower Parel,
Mumbai - 400 013.
Click here to register.
Sponsors:
VeerChand Bothra
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