Manoj Dawane is the CEO of People Infocom (Mauj Mobile), the wireless division of People Group that owns interactive websites such as Shaadi.com, Fropper.com and Astrolife.com. Consumer demand has been keeping his company on its toes—urging it to constantly churn out new concepts and services to differentiate its offering. For Dawane, innovation will drive the growth of this sector in India over the coming years. He hopes that his 15 years of experience in the telecom and software industry will come in handy in the company’s bid to improve customer experience.
Mo:life

Please give a brief description of Mauj Mobile. Where can you place it in the overall mobile content space in India?

Manoj Dawane

Mauj Mobile is one of India’s leading Mobile Value Added Solutions providers, catering to Telecom Operators, Media & Entertainment Companies and Consumer brands through its various divisions. Our area of expertise in the Mobile Technology domain lies in:

• Content Creation, Aggregation & Global Distribution
• Managed Services
• Mobile Marketing & Campaign Management
• Mobile Advertising

What sets us apart from our contemporaries is our expertise across domains and operations in the mobile technology space. In the VAS value chain we are a unique player that is — content/application owner, an aggregator, a software developer and a technology enabler – all rolled together into one.

Mo:life

Mauj Mobile seems to be targeting a young audience. Can you give us some demographic details about the users of mobile content? Do poor people, old people use these devices?

Manoj Dawane

Mobile as a medium reaches out to audiences across demographics. Given the different businesses that we operate in, we do tap consumers across age groups and income-levels. For instance, our content downloads (Games, Wallpapers, Animations, Ringtones, etc) are more prominent amongst the youth. However, our Brand Solutions and Mobile Advertising business has a different audience and targets brand managers and media agencies. Then again for Managed Services we work closely with leading operators in India and across the globe.

Mo:life

Ringtones and downloadable wallpaper seem to be an extremely basic
utilization of mobile technologies. Can you describe this market (size,
growth)? Also, can you tell us how media companies like Mauj are
thinking about their mobile users? Are they simply people with a
handheld device that can download stuff - or are you beginning to target
them, as a specific audience with their own needs and demands?

Manoj Dawane

While Ringtones and Wallpapers are major contributors to the MVAS content business, utility services are on an upward incline as well. Moving on to the latter part of your question, mobile phone has long since evolved from being a handheld downloading device to an extension of an individual’s personality. Trends, seasons, festivals and peers largely influence content consumption and there is a constant need to target consumers specifically in keeping with their preferences and to deliver content that would be best consumed by them.

Mo:life

The GPRS Dating looks interesting. Can you describe this for our
Australian audience? Is it using location capabilities of mobiles? Or is
it just a dating application that can be used via a mobile web browser?

Manoj Dawane

The GPRS Dating service allows you to create your profile on the mobile, search for other interesting profiles based on age, gender and location and send messages to the profiles you are interested in.
However, given the fact that India is a country where marriage and weddings are important milestones in an individual’s life and have a huge social significance, dating services here lag behind in comparison to matrimonial services. We have worked with our sister concern Shaadi.com, the world’s largest matrimonial service to make the world-class product available on the mobile platform etc. With every brand and product today vying for mobile space, Shaadi.com too wanted to provide its members with a convenient and on-the-go service, catering to both GPRS and non-GPRS users, a requisite that a simple Wapsite would not be able to suffice. That’s when we stepped into the picture to develop a 360-degree mobile presence for the matrimonial service – a Wapsite, an ODP (On Device Portal), a SMS service and a Voice Portal. GPRS users could use the wap services and the ODP, while non-GPRS users could create a profile, browse profiles, express interest and send messages to interested members through the SMS and Voice Services.

Mo:life

In Australia, filmmakers and television producers are interested in
mobiles as an exhibition platform, which has some unique features. Can you
tell us more about the ‘mobisodes’ you offer and other companies are
offering? Are people actually watching and reading this stuff online?
Are the scripts being altered to suit a mobile audience, or is it just
existing content being cut up in to mini episodes? Are mobile-specific
scripts being written?

Manoj Dawane

All content for the mobile phone needs to be repurposed to suit the mobile format. We have created a product called ‘M-Premiere’ which allows you to view trailers and special scenes refurbished specifically for mobile phones. We have used ‘M-Premiere’ to give viewers a first look of movies like Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, RGV Ki Aag, Money Hai Toh Honey Hai and even Kamal Hassan’s Dasavathaaram.

Mo:life

Mo:life is trying to understand the nature of the mobile user. Is it
possible for you to look in to the future (3 to 5 years) and give us a
description of how you envisage Indians and South Asians utilizing their
mobile phones. We hope they’ll be doing more than downloading ringtones!
What do you think?

Manoj Dawane

Entertainment and telecommunications are two important industries that converge to form the mobile entertainment industry. Both of these industries today are presented with immense opportunity, and that translates into an even bigger prospect for the Mobile Entertainment space in particular.
The opportunities in India are enormous based solely on the sheer size and exponential market growth-rate. India has a colossal music and film industry and the introduction of 3G technology later this year will only facilitate a better way to reach a mass-market audience in a country of more than one billion inhabitants. With 3G, services like Mcommerce and video conferencing are bound to pick up momentum.
Other than serving as a portable entertainment console, the upswing of utility services will see the Mobile Phone emerge as device of commercial and informational significance.

Mo:life

Let’s talk briefly about the income generation side of things.
What’s the business model for delivering content for mobile phones? For
your company, what has worked so far? Can you comment on future business
models?

Manoj Dawane

As far as content is concerned, the revenue is divided amongst a number of stakeholders in stipulated shares – Telcos, the Content Owner, and the Content Aggregator. For us, the fact that we double up as the Content Owner and the Content Aggregator on several occasions adds to our advantage. For instance, we had created a huge portfolio of Geeta Shlokas. (The Bhagwad Geeta is the Holy Book of the Hindus and the Shlokas are verses from the Geeta in praise of God). We worked with these Shlokas and rendered them as Tones (Ringtones and CRBTs). In this case, we became the Content Owner and the Content Aggregator together since we had created the entire portfolio ourselves and had also repurposed the recordings to suit Mobile formats.
Mobile advertising as a business model is also catching up and we have powered this means of promotion for a number of brands in the country.

Mo:life

Do you get filmmakers or other creative people pitching you ideas?
We’d like to know if India’s creative community is looking at the mobile
seriously, or whether they consider it just another outlet, like DVDs.

Manoj Dawane

In India, ringtones are the most common film related content downloaded onto the mobile phone. Going by prevailing trends, every Bollywood movie release has a telecom content partner, going to indicate the eminence this medium has attained as a promotional device. Filmmakers in India are constantly looking at offerings that are innovative and have consumer appeal. We have worked with a plethora of Bollywood movies, repurposing the film details for the mobile screens, and always creating something new has been a pre-requisite for every movie we have worked with. The latest services we have created are Interactive Voice Portals, which give fans an audio experience of the film and the starcast.
As we see it, mobile visibility allows a film to create a recall factor, and build on the popularity quotient. It is a means of touching audiences on-the-go. And considering that the mobile phone today has phenomenal penetration rates, it becomes a perfect channel to reach across the length and breadth of geographies.

Mo:life

We read about your Real Estate Mobile Application? Is it just an SMS
advertising strategy, or are we missing something?

Manoj Dawane

Real estate agents in India are a mobile-friendly community and SMS as a feature is extremely popular with them. The Makaan Mobile application was primarily designed to provide an attractive non-web alternative to property sellers who initially needed to log on to the Internet either to list their property or to view responses from interested buyers.
With Makaan Mobile, once the agent has downloaded the application on his phone, he begins receiving alerts in the form of SMS everytime someone shows interest in his listings.  India has a subscriber base of close to 300 million, and according to a report by Standford-BDA, SMS (including P2P, A2P, P2A), contributed over 55% of total VAS revenues in 2006, hence proving to be an ideal mechanism to reach a target audience that is mobile friendly and constantly on the go.

Mo:life

The final question. We ask this of all our interview subjects. Where do you see mobile content companies such as yours in the future?
Will you exist as independent companies, or will the Telco operators
simply duplicate what you do, once they work out what’s successful on
the mobile spectrum?

Manoj Dawane

With markets getting more specific and customer satisfaction being the need of the day, MVAS companies like us, are evolving to be an Innovation Crucible. We’re looking ahead to welcome the future with customized solutions and enhanced value for the customer.