As a part of our #Outlook14 series, we asked heads of three mobile VAS companies – Shotformats, Mcarbon, OnMobile and Spice Digital about their focus areas for 2014, and the challenges that the mobile VAS ecosystem needs to address. MediaNama: What are the top developments in the VAS segment in 2013? Why? Saket Agarwal, Spice Digital* - In one word, data, data & more data. - Of course traditional VAS more or less wiped out with only utility VAS sustaining with the final implementation of TRAI regulation in - letter & spirit across the board. - Key focus back on consumer & thus on the product offering. Sanjay Bhambri , OnMobile* - Regulatory restrictions were introduced whereby consumers were required to provide additional explicit consent before subscribing to VAS. Given that the user experience has changed, this has impacted the total number of activations. As a result, all operators and VAS providers have had to re-evaluate the engagement, content quality and communication of their services. - An increasing number of operators have opened up billing interfaces and have offered better remuneration to service providers to market their services without operator support. This, in a way, has democratized the entire innovation process and we are increasingly seeing quite a few operators adapting to this approach - By offering Music/videos at Re.1 al-a-carte or launching self-branded consumer applications like music streaming and games, operators are making an attempt to compete and co-opt in some other cases with OTT players. Given the subscriber…
