 What is the scope of location based mobile services?Can we expect them to go mass market?
Currently location based services are identified mainly with GPS. But we need to understand that GPS is limited to smartphones, which are only 1.5 million in the total subscriber base of more than 500 million.
So for our large customer base, affordable location based services, which are compatible with any phone, are a very desirable proposition.
Services like location based mobile marketing has a huge scope in things like information on discounts, and offers for different products and services, in the area where the subscriber is located. The brands get a surfeit of visibility and the consumer gets great deals. Another popular service is anonymous chat, which has 10% penetration in other markets, and India also has a huge potential.
How successful have been these services globally?
We have a number of location-based services in our portfolio and our products have seen huge success in countries like Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.
Airtel has recently launched one of your services. What is it all about? How has been the response been so far?
Airtel has introduced our Friend Locator Service and response to it has been great. It actually lets you connect to your friends using location based features. The service can be accessed through USSD, IVR and SMS shortcode. However, owing to value for money considerations, the USSD service is the most popular, as you get unlimited service for 10 days at the price of just Rs 10. The best thing about this app is that it will work on any phone! Any customer of Airtel could dial a USSD string to start using the service.
Is this service exclusive to Airtel? Would you be tying up with other operators?
Yes, we are in talks with some other operators. As I said earlier, we have a large portfolio of location-based services and every operator is choosing certain services considering the demand of their subscribers. In India we have worked with operators like BSNL earlier and would be working with other operators in the future. The scope of these services is so huge that operators are really excited about it.
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