‘We plan to continue investing 10-15% of our annual budgets in R&D’
How has mCarbon grown in the Indian VAS space?
We believe mCarbon, since its inception, has been a very innovative and niche player in the overall space of VAS. We have played significantly in all the core network based projects and services for telcos. While we were the technology behind the ‘Start Stop Service’ that brought transparency in VAS services in India in front of the consumers or helped telcos curb the menace of unsolicited calls and SMS by providing our technology platform behind the scenes.
We also believe that mCarbon will be the pioneer in the new wave of VAS products and offerings that is emerging now. Initially, mCarbon focused closely on serving the needs of telecom operators in its home market of India, before taking the offerings to rapidly growing potential markets beyond geographical boundaries. Our solutions enable telcos to increase ARPU, reduce churn, and expand their market share via innovative value added applications.
In terms of innovationH what are your key achievements?
With a rich portfolio of innovative award winning solutions and services, mCarbon helps operators evolve and transform their business model to meet the diverse needs of a rapidly growing customer base and remain attractive in the face of competitive pressures.
mCarbon has created a network app store called Greenroom that allows independently created apps or products to use common telco resources across interfaces and quickly go to market. The app framework either resides within a telecom/media operator or can be hosted independently over the cloud. Greenroom is a core architecture that is part of all product deployments. It enables end-to-end integration and management of various independent applications/products within
co-founder & director, mCarbon
the VAS ecosystem and makes it launch ready within a telco go-to-market model.
How much do you plan to invest in India?
India remains core to mCarbon’s growth and expansion plans while we are already present outside India as well. We are present in all the leading telcos in India though we feel that further growth and value addition is still yet to unfold as we go deeper in understanding the new age and more aware about the customer and the optimum regulatory and policy framework.
For the next financial year, mCarbon is targeting to address not only a total subscriber base of more than 500 mn across various telcos but more importantly majority of them reusing one of the various services in more than one way. We also plan to continue investing at least 10-15% of our annual budgets in R&D and innovation to constantly fuel the new product concepts.
How will your application help service providers increase their revenues?
We developed what we believe industry’s first ‘network’ app store Greenroom, which enables the quick rollout of network based products for opcos in diverse consumer segments including voice, data, SMS, and smart devices. It also serves as an enabler for independent product developers, which can develop on top of platform; significantly reducing their time-to-market. Products offered include smart call manager, call/SMS filter, campaign manager, gifting platform, and mNET.
What are the challenges that the VAS industry is facing at large?
The Value Added Services (VAS) market in India is going through a tough transformational phase with lack of consumer stickiness, technology intimidation, lack of product marketing, regulations, and bad service models as they all are hindering the growth of the industry. The need is to increase collaboration among developers, VAS players, and service providers.
What is your strategy to overcome the challenge of price sensitiveness in the Indian market?
The demand drives the pricing and if we are able to define and drive the demand curve, we should be able to suit any wallet. In India, there is segment available for every price point too, provided one is able to custom fit the product.
One of the greatest tractions we saw recently was in the price point of `1.00 and 2.00 with a leading telco in India with volumes more than making up on the micro price tag. Almost half the telcos users were using the service again highlighting the ‘value’ aspect of the service.