Bangalore: Arvind Rao never fancied himself as an entrepreneur. When he completed his MBA (master of business administration programme) from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1986, he walked straight into the portals of the consulting world at McKinsey and Co.

Straddling consulting and private equity for two decades in the US, Rao always felt “one step removed” from the thrill of creating something.

Nine years ago, Rao got together with Mouli Raman, then head of the Internet products group at Infosys Technologies Ltd, India’s second biggest software firm, to start an Internet-based alert service.

Infosys incubated OnMobile Global Ltd, then called Onscan Inc., which soon switched over from online to the telecom sphere.

OnMobile also shifted its focus from the US to India, “where telecom operators were more ready to experiment”, says the jet-setting Rao who spends half the year overseas meeting clients and expanding OnMobile’s footprint.

Today, it is India’s largest mobile value-added services (VAS) company with revenue of at least Rs400 crore and the only one to be listed.

Prior to the public offer, the company had received two major rounds of funding from a suite of investors including US-based Argo Capital Management Ltd, Deutsche Bank AG and Goldman Sachs.

OnMobile sells unbranded products such as ringtones and phone backup services to telecom operators. The approach seems to have worked, drawing in 92 telecom customers across 22 countries.

“There are few success stories in VAS other than OnMobile,” says M. Thiyagarajan, an entrepreneur and co-founder trustee of the Bangalore chapter of Mobile Monday, a global grouping of mobile enthusiasts. “It is usually considered a tough space.”

The world’s fastest growing telecom market has an expansive VAS space pegged at Rs9,760 crore as of June and growing at a fast clip of 70% year-on-year, according to research firm IMRB International. But the space is crowded, few applications have clicked and telecom operators drive a hard bargain pocketing as much as 60-80% of mobile VAS revenues.

But for an early mover such as OnMobile, the world is its oyster. According to Macquarie Research, the analytical arm of the international brokerage, OnMobile is making the leap from India’s premier VAS company to a global premier VAS company.