Vodafone India will open up its API for monetization and partner management, taking an application store approach to third party services. The company has signed up with Aepona, and within 6-7 weeks, will enable its API across 23 circles, allowing partners such as software vendors, application developers, web-based service providers and enterprises to provide billing integration for applications and services targeting targeting Vodafone's 147 million customer base. This open and direct to consumer play is a follow up to Vodafone changing the revenue share situation in India, moving to a 70:30 model, wherein the app developer/VAS company gets 70% of the revenue share. It's been a little over a year since Jonathan Bill, Head (Business Development and Innovation), Vodafone India had said that Vodafone was open to enabling direct to consumer plays. We spoke with him briefly about what this change means for the developer ecosystem in India, whether this makes VAS departments redundant, and how Vodafone will ensure that the process is not misused: MediaNama: What does Vodafone India opening up its API do for developers? Jonathan Bill: If you remember, I had changed the revenue share (and opened direct to consumer), and that was a precursor to this move. This is a much more of automated platform. We'll go live in 6-7 weeks. Developers will be able to come to our portal, sign up for access, and start developing against the API exposed, and there will be one standard. It's a global initiative, and any developer which has…
