Rajesh Razdan founded mCarbon in early 2008, to create a compelling platform based offerings for Telco’s to maximize revenues in the areas of usage and retention, customer life cycle and value management. An industry veteran of 16 years, his vision is to support global Telco’s through technology based offerings to help them up sell and cross sell more, enabling continuous usage and return based business models. In his present capacity as CEO, he steers mCarbon‘s strategic vision, corporate development and operations. Rajesh Razdan talks to Techstory about the MVAS space in India, the challenges faced by Telecom companies and how mCarbon is helping these Telecom companies to solve these problems.
Tell us more about the MVAS (Mobile Value Added Services )market in India
As per a report by IAMAI , the size of MVAS market in India in 2015 is estimated to be at US $9.5 billion, while being expected to grow at CAGR of 22.13 percent over the period of 2013- 2018. This clearly is a VAS 2.0 for India. While the first avatar was all content aggregation using traditional methods like Voice, SMS being pushed to the consumer, now it is about contextual products, better target audience, since one the customer has become more aware (with data as a key driver, many such services are freely available over mobile internet) and there is a tremendous choice being offered by the OTT players of all type. A good example is SMS being a primitive VAS product while messenger apps like whats app being a clear VAS 2.0 product. The offerings that take usage analytics of the customer as the key driver ease of use and availability across device types will be seeing more adoption in the current value added services market. Also, at a macro level, industry has witnessed a series of developments on the back of various factors, such as rising mobile Internet and broadband penetration, double-digit growth in terms of number of mobile phone users and further innovation in product development via apps and social media.
What trends do you see in the Telecom market in the next 2-3 years ?
Macro trends will be seen in the segment of data, which will continue to grow. The apps riding on data and usage of mobile internet will continue to grow tremendously in the next 2-3 years. 25 percent of data penetration will grow to 50 percent in the next two years. This is a large number, which will spur the growth of e-commerce, especially the mobile transactions.Micro trends will be seen on the operators’ efforts to drive usages. Analytics will play a core role. Also, targeting and segmentation will be significantly considered. The customer service and self-care will witness changes with more people using more apps. These macro and micro trends will continue in the next 2- 3 years.
What are some of the important challenges that the Telecom market faces today?
On a broad level, consolidation has to happen in the telecom sector with more value addition for consumers being rolled out across with data being a prime driver in the next 2 or 3 years. Analytics will play a major role in doing segmented offerings that drive usage and enhance ARPU at a grass root level. Payment enablement and using Telco connect for 3rd party fulfillment will also see a steady rise and the organizations that understand technology and changing digital lifestyles will benefit the most in this current run.
Tell us more about mCarbon products. How do these products address the problems faced by the Telcom sector ?
mCarbon is one of the pioneers in the space of usage and revenue uplift for mobile operators worldwide. We operate largely in India, South Asia and parts of emerging economies in the world. As stated earlier, Customers tend to stay dormant on their networks. Telecom companies worldwide are facing this issue and we help them solve this, by providing well crafted innovative value added services, specifically in the areas of customers’ lifetime value, usage and revenue uplift.
These are mass market services and plenty of users use them. As a consequence, you will see reduced churn, you will see a lift in the ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) and also see a lot of people engaging in these services. So, this is exactly the area we work and specialize in, to provide utilitarian service. This is also the area that has the maximum number of traction in terms of the customer interest, because this particular area covers 90-95 percent of their revenues. The entire prepaid revenue and the typical tempo is in this area of usage of revenue. That is the area we play in and we are right in the cusp of that area.
Headquartered in Noida, mCarbon is currently a team 200 + people, capable of supporting any geography of the world either directly or via partner ecosystem.
What are the plans for the company in the near future ?
We established our presence in South Asia. Besides India, we are there in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Soon, we are planning to expand to Indonesia, Vietnam and other parts of Middle East and Africa. They are huge prepaid economies. Later, we will move to other markets.
