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What is the current market share of your company? How has your company performed with respect to your competitors in the last fiscal?
Handygo Technologies has seen y-o-y growth. We believe in the quality of work so it will be difficult to ascertain the current market share of the company as the Indian VAS industry is an ever-changing market and its dynamics change every now and then.
Last fiscal year has been great in terms of product launches, growth, and enhancing human resources in the company. In regard to company's growth, handygo Technologies has registered more than 300% topline growth over the last year. For the year 2012-13, we are looking at 100% growth.
How has handygo grown in the Indian VAS space?
Since its inception in 2000, handygo Technologies has created a benchmark for changing the rulebook of the industry by bringing innovative products and thinking out of the box and grown manifolds.
We were the first one to introduce most secure, robust and above all DRM-enabled multi-purpose mobile content delivery platform (MCDP) for MTN Nigeria. We also came up with various services and in 2009, we launched Behtar Zindagi, which has brought revolution in the lives of Rural segment of India.
We are coming up with India's first ever Mall on Mobile, RockASAP.com, which is again based on our futuristic thinking.
Handygo plans to invest `120 crore for penetration of 'Behtar Zindagi' services in rural India, how has been its responses so far?
Handygo Technologies will be investing approx `120 crore in the span of next 12 months across 6 states in India. Through this activity, Behtar Zindagi is expected to reach out to approx 100,000 villages across 6 states in India. The company intends to strengthen the processes and infrastructure, initiate tie-ups with various government and non-government bodies, soil and agricultural research institutes and educate the rural masses for leveraging the application for the betterment of their lives.
The response for this activity is phenomenal and very satisfactory. The increase in minutes of usage in the last 6 months is a testimony of this fact. The service which was launched in 2009 is available in 18 regional languages, with already more than 1.67 mn subscribers across the country.
After this User Connect Campaign with airtel Rajasthan, the subscriber base in Rajasthan has registered an increase of more than 50% within 2 months in the state.
What are the challenges that the VAS industry is facing at large?
VAS industry in India has not done well because of its complete dependency on operators. Since the revenue is skewed in favor of the operator, this often creates resource challenges to improve service. The VAS players need to delink partially from the operator and start focusing on non-operator business in a big way-be it government, enterprise, and machine-to-machine applications.
The VAS players suffer from lack of infrastructure and content localization. Other challenges include slow pace and low penetration of 3G services. Also, a higher percentage of consumer segments is from the prepaid segment, where more than 50% subscribers' prepaid balance is less than `10. Herein, segmentation needs to be done to identify customers who do not have money to pay for VAS and where in, brands will be paying for their advertising inserts.
Despite these challenges, VAS will continue to grow in India owing to increase in awareness of VAS, increased mobile subscriber base, introduction of 3G services, and increased focus on m-commerce. Also, there is a need for consolidation here.
What is your strategy to overcome the challenge of price sensitiveness in the Indian market?
Price sensitivity can be overcome by providing value. Essentially identifying needs and then providing solutions. Our farm advisory service is one of such. Moreover we have identified markets and know the requirements of various segments so our price strategies are based on it. We believe in giving more value than the cost and a huge number of subscribers for our services proves our potential.