Airtel – Rural Service Initiative

Following is an interesting model that Airtel has come out with. I guess the SIM card given out under this scheme would have an on device portal (SIMTK) customized to provide the services specific to farmers and even the tariff associated with these cards will be special… I wonder what kind of services would be there in “exclusive service platform” meant for farming community (apart from information/alert services on weather, food price, govt policies etc and m-payment)… With rural penetration being focus for in next 2~3 years, all the operators would be interested in this initiative…

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IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Ltd (IKSL), a fully owned subsidiary of IFFCO, and telecom service provider Airtel will jointly launch mobile marketing services across Tamil Nadu before September.

The services include selling premier brand handsets at concessional prices, issuance of dedicated sim cards under the caption IFFCO Airtel Green Card , which envisaged voice messages on agro-development inputs in vernacular media, A Jinnah, State Manager, IKSL, told reporters.

It also attract two-year warranty service for the handsets, fully backed up after sales service for the farming community, elaboration of the connectivity network by installing adequate number of towers in remote villages by Airtel.

He said that already districts of Villupuram, Erode, Cuddalore and Salem have been covered and the remaining districts would be covered before September-end.

“It is a nation wide venture by IFFCO and Airtel by creating an exclusive service platform meant for farming community. Already people in 14 states enjoy the services,” Jinnah said.

The joint venture of the fertiliser major and the mobile service provider envisaged a growth of 20 per cent year over year and with this trend it was hopeful that about 150 million customers would be enlisted by the year 2010-2011, Jinnah said.

IKSL through Primary Agriculture Cooperative Banks (PACB), will cover Tamil Nadu. With the introduction of the scheme in five districts in Tamil Nadu, already 1,000 PACBs have been covered in the network. In the second phase, the scheme would be extended to 2,000 PACBs, he said.

Currently models ranging from Rs 1,500-4,000 by Alcatel, Samsung and Philips were sold under the scheme. The scheme included informative inputs meant for agriculture,horticulture and animal husbandry activities for rural folks through SMS.

Outsourced CxO

http://outsourcedcfo.googlepages.com/OCxO-MgtNxt-0802.pdf
An interesting concept of the outsourced CxO is mooted in a article by Mr. Jayant. As per him it should be possible for the SME segment to outsource some of the C level roles like CIO/CTO/CMO etc as these organizations may not require full timers on these roles and may not be able to afford. Some of the requirements of such a O-CXO would be to be able to work in start-up mode/’chaos, available 24×7, earn respect based on day-to-day activity, ethics etc. However I do agree that this is a different model that SME can work on but how this model is different from the consultants who help organizations to address certain issue, for e.g., if the issue is about the marketing a product, why not employ a consultant with clear goals and why require a O-CMO? Also with O-CxO I guess it will be difficult to layout the clear responsiblity and make this outsourced executive accountable for the results. Because defining a measurable KPI for activities done by CXO is difficult. No?

Also if the outsourced C level executive works for more than one organization in the similar capacity then how does the executive make sure that the ideas proposed (or derivative of that idea) is not shared with other organization and there is no conflict of interest. In the existing software outsourcing model, this concern is addressed by having physically separated facilities by the outsouced companies.

Pseudo MVNO – Virgin Mobile in India

http://www.virginmobile.in/downloads/Press_Release.pdf

Virgin mobile has finally been launched in . They are very clear that they will focus only on subscribers between age 14~25. Accordingly they have set the tariff plan. Some of the “cool” charging features are:

- Get paid to receive call i.e., you get credit of 10 paise for every 1 min of incoming call
- After 1st 2 mins of national call in a day, for rest of the local calls on that day get discount on per minute charges
- Discounted tariff in weekend

This is a clever strategy of push & pull for both the calling party and called party subscribers. This will definitely increase the network utilization for voice. Now for data, they do a daily charge of Rs 5 and unlimited access to portal. This portal hosts some free content as well as paid content. This is a good way of instigating the subscribers for data consumption (look at the ARPU – straight Rs 150 from data which is almost 70% of the current CDMA ARPU of Rs 200). With CDMA offering better data rates, I guess this is a very good strategy. If they can drive more traffic to their portal and if they have compelling content then they will get good revenue share from the 3rd party content providers as well.

Virgin mobile is offering customized handset (not sure whether they are buying from Chinese vendors like ZTE & Huawei as well). All phones are FM and camera ready and are in range Rs 1500 ~ Rs 6000. Again a clear focus on the youngsters. Virgin Mobile also claims that their service centers will be more responsive then others i.e., the same agent will handle the subscriber every time!

Worldspace Digital Radio

Worldspace digital radio services doesn’t currently support mobile based services. But what stops it to acquire a mobile streaming platform from vendors like Huawei or Ericsson or Nokia to offer a hosted streaming service across the world? Is there any issue in terms of relationship with the mobile operators or in terms of the content rights?

 http://www.financialexpress.com/news/We-will-renew-thrust-on-strategic-alliances/271901/1

Now according to this article, Worldspace has around 0.164 million paid customers in India. I am sure with appropriate pricing and access methodology, it is possible for Worldspace to get into mobile streaming. With 3G spectrum issues in India to be resolved in within 6 months, more services like satellite radio could reach the mobile consumers. Also it looks like right now Worldspace doesn’t play advertisement in its radio programs, but if it starts streaming on mobile, then it can play advertisements in a non-intrusive manner to the consumers.

Changing IT Pricing Model

http://infotech.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/msid-2705071.cms 
Even in IT, pay-as-you-go to reduce the capex is catching up. According to Accenture India Lead, earlier clients use to come to companies with set of requirements. But now they ask what can we offer. Is this trend only in IT or in all the fields. I presume now people have a basic set of requirement for a product/service and then get into comparison mode to see what are the other augment features/functionalities that you offer to differentiate. One way to differentiate this is to build assets within the organization. These assets could be specific to a domain and the assets that can be used in any domain. These assets are nothing but reusable components that can reduce the effort spent on delivering the solution to the client. These components also help to leverage the functionality developed for a certain client in certain domain to other clients in the same domain or other domain. However component based delivery brings its own set of issues like version management of the component, IPR issues in cross sharing features etc. Looks like IBM acquired Webify which provides utility to build component based services. I would recon this utility could be able to create a flow between the components and provide kind of component execution environment in a software framework that is built to provide the basic intended functionality e.g., there could be basic HR module with hooks for customization and utility like Webify could help in adding appropriate hook in these basic module with miniman integration effort.

There is an another word coined for revenue sharing model – outcome based pricing. In this pricing model fee is based on the business outcome. Also the domain specific solutions are being created by the suppliers as solution accelerators. These accelerators could provide a basic platform satifying basic requirements of the customer and whatever additional requirements are there, they could be just developed on top of this platform.

One thing is clear; with downward pressure on the margin, IT firms would be embrasing innovative methods to keep their cost down. I believe the when the firms constantly focus on creating value for the customer through its competitive advange with lower cost, it will automatically increase the value of such firms in terms of revnue and return on investment.