Mobile value added service (VAS) provider Bharti Telesoft aims to increase revenues four-fold to $200 million in the next three years.
MUMBAI: Mobile value added service (VAS) provider Bharti Telesoft aims to increase revenues four-fold to $200 million in the next three years.
To achieve that, it plans to expand into newer markets like Latin America and increase services offerings in existing markets like South Asia and Middle East, a senior company official said.
The company, which is focused on the pre-paid wireless segment in emerging economies, is betting on newer offerings like mobile commerce for growth.
Currently, VAS accounts for 8% of the Indian telecom player’s mobile revenues. Research house Gartner projects a five-year CAGR of 45% in VAS revenues, which would then account for a fifth of telecom revenues.
“We are focused on emerging markets. This market is characterised by low ARPU (average revenue per user) and pre-paid dominance. Hence, solutions for this market are unique,” chief executive officer Manoranjan Mohapatra said.
Bharti Telesoft operates in four segments - business support system (where it manages royalty programmes, electronic recharge etc), M-VAS (roaming), mobile commerce (enabling financial transactions through cell phones) and mobile entertainment. The company foresees 40% growth rate in its overall business environment.
Bharti Telesoft is majority owned by Bharti Enterprises, which is also the promoter of Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile telephony service provider.
In December, Bharti Telesoft said it raised $13.5 million from private equity investors like WestBridge Capital Partners, Sequoia Capital and Cisco Systems.
The funds were used to acquire Bangalore-based VAS software provider Jataayu Software.
g_rabin@dnaindia.net
Mohapatra, who came on board late last year, has a mandate to expand the service footprint of the company. The company earns about 40% of its revenues from India and 20% each from Africa, Europe and Middle East, and South East Asia.
“We are yet to do anything significant in Latin America. My agenda is to break that market,” Mohapatra said. Bharti Telesoft services are installed in 45 countries across 85 telecom networks, reaching 500 million subscribers.
Mohapata said the Indian VAS market is stated to touch $10 billion by 2010. “Africa should be worth $5-6 billion and South East Asia about $8-10 billion. Asia is one of the fastest growing markets,” he said.
The company is witnessing good traction in the mobile commerce service it launched recently. It has signed up Barclays Bank and is in talks with a few more for deployment.
“More people have mobile phones than bank accounts. It’s a great platform to expand banking services and we have products for that space. We see a lot of potential here,” Mohapatra said.
Although the company provides mobile entertainment, it is not into content creation or acquisition. It relies on partners to aggregate content and hence, is immune to rising content costs.
g_rabin@dnaindia.net
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