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Rakesh Mahajan, VP (Marketing) & Business Head (VAS & Incubation) At Airtel, On Mobile VAS In India – Part 1

Rakesh Mahajan, Vice President (Marketing) and Business Head (VAS and Incubation) at Bharti Airtel, joined the company after a stint at Orange, prior to which he spent six years with British Telecom in BT Global Services, driving BT’s Mobility business for enterprises across Europe, US and Asia, with Strategy, Marketing and Product Development responsibility focusing on new products and services. A few weeks ago, Mahajan spoke at length with MediaNama, elaborating on his talk at VAS Asia 2010, about how he'd like to see entities in the content and services ecosystem approach Mobile Value Added Services (VAS). Part one of this two part interview: MediaNama: Is the lack of innovation at the product level in the VAS ecosystem worrying? How is approach to services in India different from that in Europe? Rakesh Mahajan: Innovation is critical. In Europe, the model is different. Typically, the operator does the research, defines a set of requirements, and finds a partner or builds it himself. When I was at BT, that concept to market (c2m) was nine months. And we were wildly successful when we brought it down to 5 and a half months. Here it's much faster, and the c2m is much shorter: we take a broader ecosystem approach, and the (telecom) operator guides but doesn't prescribe. I say I want more in rural, and people come up to me and tell me they've got an interesting proposition. There it's much more of a supplier relationship, while here we encourage and then we…

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Founder @ MediaNama. TED Fellow. Asia21 Fellow @ Asia Society. Co-founder SaveTheInternet.in and Internet Freedom Foundation. Advisory board @ CyberBRICS

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