"There is a great growth potential in building various utility services such as mobile health, education, and agriculture, which can digitally empower the citizens by providing efficient access to essential information and services and foster inclusive growth." Milind Pathak, VP- SAARC, Comviva

Mobile VAS (MVAS) has witnessed an accelerating growth in recent years, as it offers tremendous opportunities to build new businesses in India. The growth drivers of VAS industry include large-scale penetration of mobile services, with around 65 percent to 70 percent people using smartphones, low broadband penetration, and large consumption of data, content, and social networking.

Traditional MVAS like P2P SMS and caller ring back tones (CRBTs) continue to be substantial providers of these revenues. These basic services are expected to be large contributors. With the emerging 3G, mobile users expect more from their mobile services. This increased demand for more evolved VAS services is a gradual process but has been witnessed more for the last two years. Factors contributing to the increased demand for the market are variety of services, greater speed of delivery, overall improved service experience, and the growing rural market. There is a great growth potential in building various utility services such as mobile health, education, and agriculture, which can digitally empower the citizens by providing efficient access to essential information and services and foster inclusive growth. Among users with higher-end mobile phones, there will also be experimentation with applications like mobile broadcast/TV, on-demand video, video/audio streaming - though these services will be of short duration, probably of 1 to 3 minutes, and will serve to give updates, summaries of events, entertainment, and news.

With approximately 60 percent of the total 1.2 billion population deprived of banking facilities, mobile banking can play a major role in financial inclusion. In line with the continuing rapid penetration of mobile phones and the growing need for real-time cashless payments, m-commerce and the idea of mobile banking are quickly gaining popularity.

Mobile health is the emerging platform in the industry, to provide healthcare to consumers. Education too has a lot of applications, and it gives players an opportunity to reach out to the audience in rural segments who do not even have access to the basic infrastructure for education. Both health and education have plethora of opportunities, especially in the rural segment. The applications should be designed to bring value to the segment and help in economic growth.

Comviva is focusing closely on developing relationships with large operator groups in the region. In addition to wireline and wireless operators, Comviva is expanding its client base to include financial institutions. The company focuses on emerging markets and believes that mobile telephony has the power to change lives - both basic connectivity as well as additional services that people can use. Comviva foresees great uptake of mobile commerce, mobile internet, and mobile data in the next 2-3 years and, therefore, will be focusing on products and services around these key areas.

The growing mobile wireless marketplace and mobile number portability signal that operators must find new ways to sustain revenue growth. In a landscape characterized by comparable products and services and demanding users, the ability to segment and enhance the value of customers over the customer lifecycle is a significant opportunity for growth.