After the launch of mBit Infotech that is the joint venture between VASSoft.net (the IT division of Himenviro group India) and mBit Pte. Ltd. (Managed and controlled by mTouche Technology Bhd), they introduced Peer 2 Peer and Interactive Social Networking application in the Indian market. To allow real-time social interaction between multiple platforms—SMS, WAP and WEB they have also initiated JuzFrens. They claim that it is the only social networking site that is designed for mobile phones.
So we decided to have a word with mBit Infotech’s CEO Raghavendra Aggarwala. He briefed us about what path were they looking in order to be able to dominate the VAS industry, which seems to be on a roll. mBit says that If a journalist or photo journalist clicks a picture of people from his mobile and wants to share it with a colleague sitting in the office immediately. It is possibile through the P2P application. Well, India ranks 8th in the world with the highest level of film piracy of any English-speaking country, lets take a look at the how the P2P mobile content is shaped up to get a better picture. Some excerpts…
How is Mobile VAS in India shaped up today?
- Peer to Peer caters to over 50% traffic in the internet arena. It is safe to say that in mobile world we would see the similar pattern. If this is a ok assumption then we are talking of a major revenue source for operators and content providers.
- Unlike internet p2p network where it is extremely hard to identify a user and almost impossible to deploy a central billing system. It is fairly easy to track and deploy store fronts and billing systems on a mobile p2p system.
- Finally and most importantly, we can buy a 1 mb of data transfer on internet in less than 50 p. However on a Airtel network and others it can cost us upto Rs. 15. This shows that there is a lot of scope for revenue share and different business models to make the content available to the user at a lower cost and still be able to get a favorable revenue share for service.
How much is your current subscriber base?
82k
Do you have a revenue model?
- Ad revenue
- Revenue share for data and/or subscription.
3G is basically a fatter data pipe.As we hope that p2p would generate 50% of the network traffic, fatter the pipe, better the business.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lfRLz8-6k4
What are your key focus areas?
They are as follows:-
- Increase the user base through our community service.
- Tie up with Operator one by one for a favorable revenue share deal.
- Promote service at regional level.
- Promote services as white box solution to network operators and/or local distributors .
- Jabber
- YouTube
- LimeWire
- Kazaa
- Facebook.
Where do you see mBit Infotech five years down the line?
