[by Cerius Shah] Mobile VAS in India is not a good investment opportunity due to the uneven revenue share between operators and VAS players says Sasha Mulchandani. The senior investment director of Nokia’s (NYSE: NOK) California based venture arm states in this Mint interview that out of six markets (US, Europe, China, South Korea, Israel and India), India is the only one they have adopted this strategy in. Bluerun intends to focus on gaming, back-end retail and education for now and will review business proposals for VAS at a later date.
Nokia had recently acquired VAS major Enpocket for an undisclosed amount. Considering its market dominance, the impending Indian launch of Ovi and its understanding of the Indian consumer space, they seem to be looking beyond the hype and focusing on opportunities with revenue potential instead of fancy press releases. The ground reality is that operators are driving voice usage and while this is a culmination of current policy (or lack thereof) on spectrum and sustained growth in the segment, high ARPU’s are still a distant dream. Typically operators will wait for growth to plateau out and then differentiate services based on VAS. That’s still a few months if not years away, until then, when it comes to VAS, Bluerun will be only seeing red.
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