The Indian Value Added Services (VAS) is expected to log in a turnover of over Rs 20,000 crore by the year 2015 noted telecom experts during the, 4th International Conference & Exhibition of VAS Asia 2008. The event was organized by Bharat Exhibition Pvt Ltd.

Currently the industry which is pegged around a revenue of US $1.2 billion will see major growth in the music and mobile gaming segments suggests a PricewaterhouseCoopers report. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers for the moment, the Indian VAS industry is being driven by SMS with about 44% of the share, followed by new applications Ringtones & RBTs, GPRS, CLI and other VAS.

OnMobile CEO and co-founder Arvind Rao said: “ringback tones alone have a market of 40 to 50 million users and constituted almost 50 per cent of the VAS market in India and this trend will continue in the near future also.”

According to various telecom experts, as a reality in the near term, the mobile phone will soon double up as a smart card, replacing plastic cards. Remittances of funds through mobile phones is expected to fulfill the gap in rural banking infrastructure, this would be yet another growth driver for the Indian VAS industry.

In the context of India rolling out 3G services shortly, the analyst report said that “wireless operators see 3G customers more willing than 2G customers to use a variety of multi-media services.” At present music and games are downloaded on GPRS or 2.5 G platform. One of the factors that foretell a huge market for VAS in India is the lowering age profile of mobile handset owners and falling costs of handsets with ever-richer features.

While Mr. Rao emphasized the “R-factor”, the expanding of mobile services to rural areas as the future driver of the VAS market, suggested that about 40 % of VAS revenues in this category will come from villages & small towns.

Tata Teleservices president for VAS Pankaj Sethi found the “bottom of the pyramid” customers to expand their use of VAS and drive revenues of operators.

Entertainment led services and personalization were some other areas that were pushing VAS use, according to Pankaj Sethi. The other two areas of growth, which the experts suggested, included mobile and social networking.

Pradip Shrivastava, chief marketing officer, Idea Cellular, emphasized international mobile money transfer as a “huge challenge” as it provided quick and efficient service in India with millions of remittances to homes from migrant workers and white collar labour. Annual remittances were now touching the 30 billion dollar mark.

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