'We are sitting right now at the sweet spot of convergence'

What makes Mundu Radio different from other Internet radio
stations?

Its USP is the variety of content that you get. Amongst other forms of radio
the most prevalent being FM, there are mostly five to six stations playing more
or less the same genre of music. The core proposition of Internet radio is that
there are close to 100,000 Internet radio stations all over the world with
genres of primarily music. But there are other contents like news, sports,
financial news, talk shows, comedy shows etc. as well. What we have done with
Mundu Radio is taken the experience one step further for the user and put all
these radio stations together.

Mundu Radio works only on mobile phones with Internet
connections, mostly smart phone models, does Geodesic have any plans to target
lower end phone users too?

The market for smart phones on a global basis is large-with almost 15%
adoption. In India the numbers are low, however, with the rapid growth of the
mobile phone industry, the smart phone market is also growing at a fast pace.
Nokia manufactures the largest series of smart phones with Symbian OS. We are
also looking at making our product available for 'non-smart phones' version,
tapping into the large market which is non-Symbian, but the premise being that
you need a phone with an Internet connection.

What about the revenue sharing model in the recent tie up
between Geodesic and BenQ?

It's a revenue shared deal, but the reason why we are not currently
talking about the revenue aspect is because the handsets, bundled with Mundu
suite of products, will be shipped in only in the second/third quarter of this
year. Also, BenQ has not formally announced the models and only after BenQ does
that would we be informing about the revenue sharing mechanism.

What is the technology behind your Information, Communication
and Entertainment (ICE) applications?

The applications are innovative and futuristic. And, if you see the
industry, convergence between the mobile phone and the Internet, and
communication with infotainment is widespread. We are tapping into this market.
Even though, GPRS and wireless data market is not as big as the entire mobile
industry, but that's where the next growth is going to be. We are sitting
right now at the sweet spot of convergence and as more and more users start
using our applications or see value in these applications, we believe that the
adoption of our products will increase.

What do you foresee as the areas of growth in your company?

Most of our growth this fiscal year will come from our Internet products and
professional services. For the next fiscal, Internet products will continue to
be the dominant form of revenue. But we are planning to increase our revenues
from wireless products, substantially. Wireless products will have the highest
growth rate , but from an overall revenue perspective, the Internet products
will probably outsell wirelessproducts. Because most Internet products are sold
to companies in multi-million dollar deals, versus selling a $30 wireless
product to an end user.

Ratnadeep Gupta

ratnadeepg@cybermedia.co.in