Understanding the INR 48,000 Crore ($ 9.6 Billion) Mobile VAS Industry in India

Everyone in India is talking about mobile and the opportunity around it. The penetration of mobile is staggering and almost every Indian will soon have a mobile in his hand. Yes, 800 million of the 1.3 billion already have it. The Mobile Value Added Services segment is claimed to be a INR 48,000 Crore market by 2015. Currently it is at INR 21,400 Crore. Here are the projections from a Deloitte Report:

So, now we know how big the segment is, but what exactly is MVAS?

MVAS includes all services provided to the end customers beyond standard voice calls.

In this definition, Person to Person (P2P) Short Messaging Service (SMS) is also included as a part of MVAS, however, they’re now considered as a minimum requirement for mobile phone operators. Dominant categories within the Non-SMS services include ring tones, music and entertainment, gaming and mobile browsing.

Clearing what MVAS stands for, here are some of the prevalent themes within it and the companies existing in this space:

Now, Non-voice revenues currently constitute about ~ 10% of revenues of Indian telecom operators. A comparison with other countries indicates an average of ~23%, providing large scope for growth of MVAS in India.

This was the basic skeleton of the MVAS segment in India, stay tuned for more detailed discussions and startups in the space. Here are some of the startups in the Mobile space from PAGES.