Debasis Chtterjee, director-operations, Netxcell, says: “Telecom licensing is already applied on operators. VAS content companies are an element in the value chain of the end delivery of M-VAS to customers and do not require separate licensing.”

With regard to revenue sharing, “Today it’s four percent of the revenues against the world wide average of 15 percent. Hence to say it will grow at a CAGR of 65 percent for the next four years is not an over estimate,” Shivkumar opines.

Abhay Singhal, co-founder and head, global ad sales, mKhoj, says: “Depending on how best we can leverage the potential, a regulatory body such as IAMAI and TRAI might include MVAS as a legitimate service and put regulations around it.”

“We foresee a lot of change in the MVAS value chain which would be the result of the existing challenges in the industry. We hope that the operators would be willing to share more data with the companies. However, we are an off deck ad network where our dependency on the operator is minimal,” Singhal said.

“Unless there is a compelling need I don’t see why government needs to intervene. RBI (Reserve Bank of India) is about to launch its Mcom/Mbanking guidelines and this will help ease the hesitation in the users, which in itself is the right sort of boost. Some licensing guidelines cannot do any harm for us,” Shivkumar notes.

Feature rich handsets becoming cheaper

With the entry of 3G, TRAI’s positive stance and availability of feature rich handsets is changing the scenario.

“MVAS market is now at a point of explosion. Handsets are more capable of accepting enhanced services and features. The market size is set to double in the coming financial year. Feature rich handsets applications are available at more affordable prices,” Pankaj Sethi adds.

“High end customers have already displayed their willingness to pay for better services as in Blackberry, Windows mobile devices and Apple I phone. So existing urban customers will find richer services and the willingness to pay, while lower urban and rural customers will have to find a new level, new uses and new meanings for M-VAS as relevant to their daily lives,” Sethi adds.