Spotlight

The ‘One’ stop shop for MVAS

One97 Communications was founded to present the telecom industry with value added services. It has now made its mark right on target, says Renuka Vembu

One97 Communications is a company engaged in providing value added services to the telecom industry. It was incubated in December 2000, and is the brain-child of Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who is the Founder and Managing Director of the organization. Prior to One97, Sharma has been associated with companies like River Run Software Services and Intersolutions. It was while his stint at Intersolutions that he realized and grasped the nuances of the telecom market and the areas that could be exploited. This ultimately transformed and culminated into his vision for utilizing Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS) for the surging telecom sector.

The nascent stages

The name One97 emerged from the telecom helpline number, which then was 197. While with Intersolutions, which was a subset of the telecom sector and produced platforms for them, Sharma realized a host of opportunities like the stable telecom revenues, larger penetration and also wireless which was coming up in a big way. He could figure out the needs to address a larger market and also fix up a revenue model.

In March 2001, just months after it embarked on its journey, One97 got its first client—the telecom giant, Bharti Airtel. Likewise, a set of factors helped him bag his first client. Bharti Airtel was looking for someone who could provide them with live astrology service. Since this was not very fashionable, not many people were willing to accept the offer. Through his friends, Sharma came to know of this window of opportunity that was open, and since he was without any business for the first three months, he decided to tap this opening and take the project.

“We sold them a package consisting of astrology services, SMS based auctions and music related applications. Being new to the industry was a constant hindrance we had to live with for a while,” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Managing Director, One97 Comm-unications. He claims to have given his client Airtel, 10 times revenue in three months. He gradually moved to providing services like music, cricket, etc. His initial apprehensions about entering a new space and carrying no network legacy was laid to rest as his risk paid off.

Battle to be won

To begin with, accepting the business model he had designed proved to be difficult. It was a pay-per-transaction model, which was deployed for free and charged as per usage. ‘Don’t buy technology, buy business,’ was his principle on which he set his first step.

Finance came through loans from friends and family. Then came the issue of manpower as people were skeptical to work for a new company as against a known brand name.

Being in the service industry, the quality of service delivery assumes great importance for them. As clients started experiencing their service, it enhanced their brand and image in the eyes of the customers, thereby helping garner a larger pool of clientele. The central point of One97’s business is user experience; keeping this as a focus, they seek to set benchmarks in telecom VAS innovation, creating applications that are unique and relevant in the domestic and international market. This has helped them grow about 1,000 times over the last five years.

Areas of work

With one branch office in Mumbai, and an onsite presence across all telecom circles in India, some of One97’s products that have been delivered across consumer, network and enterprise space are:

• Consumer: Voicerix—a multilingual voice portal with interactive plug and play applications. Inapaq—a subscription service on voice, SMS, USSD and WAP, with comprehensive customer profiling and preferences. Dakia is a voice-based messaging for rural community, and Browse ‘n’ Buy is a mobile commerce application on voice and WAP, etc.
• Network applications: VIO (customer, communication and upselling platform), caller ring back tones, precall announcement, missed call alerts, spam call block, post call notification, intelligent call router, etc.

The company has also developed and deployed a solution for recharging toll tags for the Gurgaon Delhi Express way. They are also working with a number of media houses to establish connect with their consumers and make infotainment more interactive.

Significant projects undertaken

Sharma said, “In the recent years, our projects in Rural VAS, mobile marketing and enterprise solutions and revenue enhancement for mobile operators have been welcomed by our clients. One97 has developed and deployed the VAS platform for the Airtel IIFCO Krishna Sanchar project to connect farmers by launching their ‘Dakia Service.’ This provides a platform where people of a region having relevant information can share it with other members of group.”

One97 launched their new services for mobile video applications earlier this year. This bouquet of services includes the first-of-its-kind video portal and ‘Vringo’ in India. The company has entered into a strategic partnership with Vringo where users are allowed to set their own visual or video ring tones and choose the video, avtaar, slide show or picture they want their friends to see when they call, opined Sharma.

Clients and contracts

One97 has clients spread across all of India and other Asian countries. It has a widely deployed telecom application platform reaching 97% mobile users in India. Every month 140 million unique telecom users perform over a billion transactions on this platform using voice, SMS and WAP applications. The organization works with all the major telecom operators pan India and other Asian countries, with enterprise clients, including companies from sectors spanning media and entertainment, BFSI, retail and FMCG.

Future vision

They have grown from $2 million in 2004 to $25 million in revenues today. By fiscal year 2010, Sharma’s target is to touch $100 million. Currently, only one to 2% of their revenues are from the international space, and they target to take this to 10%; however, clearly the emphasis stays on the Indian market. The economic meltdown will show little effect on them, and they are looking forward to acquiring new businesses and staying efficient.

In the next two years, One97 will have a workforce of over 1,000 people. Sharma gave an insight into the company’s social fabric, “At One97, we capitalize on our ‘social software’—something that lies at the very core of our services. It consists of our beliefs, our norms, our sincerity to feedback, and our eagerness to improve. Blended together, these factors enable us to move from commitment to excellence in our business and reach new heights in the near future,” he stated.

Sharma is confident that after the slump now, by 2010, the world market and VAS will again be on the rise. Also, with 3G coming in, One97 plans to foray into the video and data on networks field.

renuka.vembu@expressindia.com