MVAS - KEY PLAYERS

This mobile value added services industry is about to mature and awaiting some consolidation and here is the list of active MVAS providers: ACL Wireless, Active Media, Air2Web, AOL Mobile, AstroYogi Mobile, Astute Systems , Bharti Telesoft, BUGZY, Cellebrum, Cellnext, Coruscant Tec, Digital Strait, EnableM, Hungama Mobile, IMIMobile, Indiatimes Mobile, Jataayu, Kirusa, Lifetree, Mauj, mChek, Mjoy, Mobile365, Motvik, mobiSolv, Mobile2Win, One97, OnMobile, OnyxMobile, ORG Telecom , Phoneytunes, Roamware, Rediff Mobile, Sarayu Telecom, Tech Mahindra, Telenity, ValueFirst, Yahoo Mobile India, Webdunia, Ziva Software. This section will introduce certain key players in the VAS industry. These players are actively involved in the VAS value chain.
ACL Wireless Limited
ACL established in 2000 is a privately owned company funded by IAVM, with strategic investments from Naspers/MIH. It employs over 240 people and is headquartered in Delhi.
ACL Wireless is a mobile VAS player in managed mobility and community messaging service across 21 countries. It works with Airtel in India, MTC-Vodafone in Middle East, Claro in Brazil and AIS in Thailand. ACL Wireless offers interactive SMS & voice response along with permission based SMS broadcasts & alerts. ACL wireless offerings also includes service creation and operation for enterprises and operator VAS, billing & content aggregation. Its community & messaging services suite includes: mobile chat, mobile social networking, mobile photo sharing and internet messengers on mobile available across GPRS & SMS mediums.
ACL has partnerships with Gemalto, Smart Trust, Eposs and Unified Communications which enable it to develop cutting edge products and distribute them globally.

Bharti Telesoft
Bharti Telesoft, established in 1999 is owned by Bharti Enterprises, venture capital investors Sequoia Capital and Cisco. Bharti Telesoft offers software products and services to wireless and wireline operators.
In 2002, Bharti Telesoft acquired CellCloud Technologies, a leader in the field of prepaid recharge solutions and in 2007, acquired Jataayu a leading player in the mobile Internet space, to bolster its portfolio of Internet and VAS applications for mobile operators and handset manufacturers. Bharti Telesoft has deployed solutions for over 100 mobile operator customers in more than 60 countries worldwide. Its solutions help power services to over 500 million mobile subscribers globally. It has a strong sales and marketing focus in the Asia Pacific region, Russia and the CIS, the Middle- East, Africa, Europe and Latin America. It has its R&D facilities at New Delhi, Banglore and Mumbai.
Bharti Telesoft is works on number of services including SMS router, voice SMS, SMS chat, and Live video services, P2P transactions including balance transfer, music sharing and videos sharing. mCommerce and Live TV to mobile are the key focus areas for future growth.

Indiagames
Indiagames Ltd is India’s benchmark mobile and online gaming company The Company is engaged in publishing and developing games across various platforms including Online through its portal www.indiagames.com, and Mobile. Majority of Indiagames revenues comes from international markets as in India industry is still in its nascent stage. The company plans to tap the growing mobile market in India and is investing heavily in generating awareness about games among mobile users. Indiagames is targeting 50% market share in mobile gaming business by 2010.
Indiagames has over 300 employees and offices in Mumbai, London, Los Angeles & Beijing. Indiagames’ distribute its product through partnerships with mobile operators in over 75 countries. The key investors of Indiagames include UTV, Adobe Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc.

Mauj
Mauj established in 2003, as a digital media entertainment company. It is the wireless division of the People group with interests across very well known internet businesses in India like (Shaadi.com, Fropper.com) and Film Production (People Pictures). MAUJ has developed partnerships with more than 25 operators and portals worldwide. The Company specializes in Mobile games both in the domestic as well as international markets. The company currently develops over 20 original titles every month and also has marketing rights for 800 international mobile games. The company has one of the strongest management teams as well as infrastructure in this industry and employs approximately 150 people in its offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Dubai, London, and New York.
Mauj offers services in three areas: Mobile Content & Applications aggregation and repurposing which includes Games, Wallpapers, Ringtones, News, Matrimonial; Mobile Software & Services which provides Middleware Solutions, Roaming Applications, SMS Gateways; and Mobile Media Solutions which includes Advertising and Branding Opportunities.

OnMobile
OnMobile, Incubated at Infosys in 2000, is headquartered in Bangalore. It is the first Indian telecom VAS company to go public. OnMobile also has offices in Mumbai, Delhi, Singapore, Paris, Jakarta, London, Kuala Lumpur, Seattle and Sydney. OnMobile is India’s largest white labeled VAS company for Mobile, Landline and Media Service Providers. OnMobile offers integrated platform across various technology silos traditionally found in Telco’s infrastructure for up selling and improving user experience. On Mobile services include: Managed Services like infrastructure, operations, SLA management, fault management etc. for telcos; Marketing Support Services which include Mobile 1-to-1 marketing, Event based opportunity analysis, execution of marketing services, Content Aggregation and Management for their enterprises customers; and Mobile Media, and mCommerce.
The acquisition of French data products company Voxmobili has further strengthened the product portfolio with products like Phone Backup, Network Address Book & Mobile Paparazzi - deployed with many global carriers like Orange, AT&T, France Telecom, T-Mobile, Wanadoo, & Turkcell.

Phoneytunes
Phoneytunes offers mobile content services, content management solutions, premium billing platforms. Phoneytunes has a state-of-art technology development center in New Delhi. Phoneytunes is among the top and most respected players in the Telecom VAS domain with a series of highly innovative, high feature and revenue generating services and platforms helping carriers and operators globally with powerful technological solutions. The key values while designing solutions include helping operators with increase in revenues and reduction in costs. Phoneytunes focus on: Development Platforms which include BREW, SMS, Symbian MMS platforms, online charging platforms, portal frameworks; Content creation & aggregation which offer mobile content and interactive voice recognition systems, Customized polyphonic and monophonic ringtones creation, wallpapers, video downloads; Application Development that include Utility applications like SMS gateways & SMS applications. Fun Applications like SMS / WAP Games & Chat/ Dating engines; and Other services including mobile secrets, phone tricks, lost mobile reporting board and a discussion forum.

Webaroo
Webaroo established in June 2004 has developed several market leading products. Some have already achieved significant market attraction. Webaroo employs approximately 150 people in its offices in India and USA. Webaroo’s founders include Silicon Valley based experienced serial entrepreneurs Rakesh Mathur (founder of Armedia, Junglee, Stratify) and Beerud Sheth (founder of Elance). Webaroo’s management includes world-class, highly-experienced executives with decades of experience in building and managing high-growth companies. Webaroo has offices in Silicon Valley, Seattle, Mumbai and Delhi. Webaroo develops mobile software and services for consumers across the world. With a large and rapidly growing user-base, it offers advertisers — unprecedented mobile reach and targeting. Its core offering include SMS GupShup service that enables creation of groups of any size and allow communication with all group members at a cost of a single SMS sent by the group creator; Webaroo Software enables users to browse and search web content offline which is compressed for consumption on laptops, PDAs or smartphones. Since these features are built on an SMS platform, it can be used even on the most basic and low-end phones.

Spice Mobile VAS (formerly Cellebrum)
The spice group promoted company has recently gone through rebranding and is now called as ‘Spice Mobile VAS’. The company is headquartered in Parwanoo in HP. Spice Mobile VAS has presence in 10 countries and employs around 450 people. Its corporate office is in Noida and registered office is in New Delhi. It also has regional offices in Chandigarh, Mumbai, Kolkata, Lucknow and Bangalore. Spice Mobile VAS is a technology enabler in wireless application space. The company develops applications for three main segments - voice based services, messaging and roaming.

PayMate
PayMate established in 2006 is a Mumbai based wireless transactions platform provider. It spin-off from Coruscant Tec, to on wireless content. PayMate has created a viable ecosystem to enable wireless transactions connecting banks, switches, merchants and customers using a simple, secure and seamless technology.
PayMate portfolio includes products like GiftMate, FlyBuySms and many more value added services which go beyond just payments to stuff like mobile shopping and gifting. The primary offerings of PayMate are : one, Payment Services where consumers can use their credit card via mobile phones for in-person and remote purchases and transactions like shop online, buy movie & airline tickets, pay bills at restaurants and retail stores, etc. Two, Gift Mate, a mobile voucher, which enables one to gift money to anyone with a mobile phone which can then be spent at over 3,000 online and offline stores.