Mobile commerce is the new buzzword doing the rounds of mobile telephony and m-Commerce is on its way to become a significant part of the $1.5 billion mobile value-added services (m-VAS) industry in India. It's a fresh lease of life for the m-VAS sector, which till now was hugely dependant on music and content-based downloads. The subsequent focus has now moved for service-based offerings like m-ticketing, m-coupons, m-cheks, which provides convenience and ease of usage on all range of handsets. Eyeing the potential in this space, mobile ticketing for movies and airlines are the two main areas which have seen investor interest. For example, Network18 invested in BigTree Entertainment, one of India's first mobile ticketing companies.

Its portal Bookmyshow.com allows booking of tickets for movies, ICL cricket matches, plays and flights. Even Adlabs has a downloadable mobile application which allows one to buy tickets, food and beverage items. Startups like PayMate offers m-coupons, redeemable at retailers, restaurants across the country while Kyazoonga.com has tied up with multiplex operators to offer e-ticketing and m-ticketing services. Even in the air-ticketing space, Makemytrip.com has recently launched an M-commerce platform "AnyMobile", whereupon sending an SMS to a short code allows a step-by-step transaction for search, purchase and delivery of airline tickets.

Although it is early days, busy lifestyles and simplicity of usage in mobile internet enabled phones is driving sampling of these services. OnMobile founder and CEO Arvind Rao says, "The mobile ticketing strategy is working in IT-savvy cities like Hyderabad, Mumbai and Bangalore. During the weekends, about 10-15% of movie tickets are sold via mobile phones." Indian telecom operators can only encourage the trend since everyone has been trying to milk more revenues from value-added services in the backdrop of falling average revenue per users (ARPUs) from subscription. Pradeep Shrivastava, chief marketing officer, Idea Cellular says, "ARPU from voice-based services is under tremendous pressure.

Topical content that is unique to the mobile phones is the demand of the day and the user's needs must be met in a simple manner." Shrivastava surely knows a thing or two about simplicity. Idea Cellular, which kickstarted the "Press * to copy a caller-tune" is now an industry standard, adopted by most other operators, thus simplifying the caller ring back tunes (CRBT) selection process. But although the major chunk of VAS revenue is from ringtones, caller-tunes, SMSs, the "period of low hanging fruit is now over", according to Rao. "The question today, is how one drives repeat usage from India's 215 million strong mobile user base. I think m-Coupons, m-Ticketing, mobile banking, social networking, will be the value-adding services of the future."

Analysts say that although VAS in India has grown 20 times in the past five years, attempts to expand the existing popular bouquet - ringtones, CRBT, SMSs, have either been muted or met with little success for a number of reasons. Prime amongst them are spectrum shortage and handset limitations. Currently at a mere 7-10% of telco revenues, VAS can exceed 20% of revenue in five years if the potential is unlocked. "Moreover Bluetooth is bypassing revenue in the system," points out Raj Singh Bhandal, MD, Active Media Technology, which pioneered the Vodafone Tuesdays m-ticketing services at multiplexes. Industry observers say that a large vacuum exists today between setting up GPRS and driving visit to WAP portals of service providers.

"Although medium to high-end handsets sold today allow mobile internet usage through e-mail, search, full music track downloads and GPS navigation services, user education is a key component of driving usage of these services," says Lloyd Mathias, director, marketing India & South West Asia, Motorola. Pricing of these services is also a key issue hurting sampling. Ad-funded content is welcome, but customisation of ads to make it non-intrusive is an issue, which marketers are working on. "For example, a full music track download costs Rs 20-25, while a music album featuring 12-15 songs costs Rs 50 -100. Why would the user choose to download the track?" asks Mathias.