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Well, just one issue back, we did a cover story on what we called the m-everything wave that is sweeping across India: use of mobile phones to do banking, bill payment, ticket booking, shopping and other essential and not-so-essential activities of everyday life in India. We concluded that mobile is actually reaching the unreached and is bridging the gap that existed between India and Bharat.

We think we were a little too correct for our comfort. While the mobile phone and the essential services that come with itvoice and SMSare getting ubiquitous, when it comes to the use of next generation tools, Indian businesses have miles to go. And we are not even talking of 3G.

When Dataquest decided to do a quick review of the not-so-new GPRS-based offerings by the largest consumer services businesses in India, we found that not many have yet taken to it in a serious way. There is a lot of buzz around mobile banking, mobile payment, mobile booking and many other such m-services, and it religiously finds a mention on websites. But most of them are restricted to plain old SMS, based on keywords. Not surprisingly, few use that for transaction purpose.

The base of GPRS subscribers is low. But at around 25 mn in a base of 258 mn GSM subscribers, it is not too low either. And what is more, it is growing rapidly. To look at it in another way, it is more than the installed broadband base in India. Also, though there is no available statistics to suggest that, it is safe to assume that most GPRS users are among the creamy layer of GSM users in India. And are more likely to use newer services than others.

Based on our review, here are the broad trends that we observe in GPRS-based customer facing applications offered by Indias largest consumer services businesses. We chose services because the role information plays in a services transaction completion is far more.

It is in sync with the maturity in online offerings: Not surprisingly, those businesses that have a mature online offering are the ones that are leading the GPRS offering. So, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Jet Airways, and other ICICI ventures are leading the GPRS-adoption curve.

Banking leads among verticals: Not surprisingly, like most technology adoption, even GPRS adoption is led by the banks. Within the vertical, from among the top five, the more technology savvy users like ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, and State Bank of India have active GPRS offerings while Punjab National Bank, Canara Bank and Bank of Baroda do not yet provide any GPRS-based offering. Among the savvy small banks, Axis Bank is yet to catch up on this, while Kotak Bank already has an offer on GPRS based application that is can be downloaded. While Union Bank of India is a pleasant surprise, with its offering Umobile the foreign banks are still behind. One major name missing is Citibank India, which has a fairly significant online offering. All the banks mentioned here, it must be noted, have SMS alert and query based services. Many smaller banks also offer SMS-based services.

Bankings younger cousins in BFSI, trading and insurance, are the next in line. In trading, while ShareKhan offers a downloadable application, ICICI Direct offers what it calls a low bandwidth site that is accessible on mobile. By far, it is the most functional site that we came across. Insurance has started flirting with the technology, with a few firms starting to test it.

However, with very little engagements with the customers, most of them are content offering the facilities to pay premium through mobile phone. So, most of them have actually tied up with third party vendors such as ngpay and mchek to enable mobile payment of premia. Ngpay provides premium payment facilities for firms such as Birla Sun Life, Max New York Life, Aviva, Met Life, ICICI Prudential, Kotak Life, Reliance Life. Even most utility companies and phone companies have taken this route.

In fact, the story of telecom operators is the real dark spot. While most offer WAP portals for content, few offer customer services portal on mobile.

In travel, among the three technology savvy carriers, Jet Airways and Indigo have GPRS-based offerings while Kingfisher, which led in technology when it launched, still does not have an offering on GPRS. Makemytrip and Yatra offer booking through ngpay. Landmarkthe book storeand Future Bazaar also have GPRS offerings through partnerships.

Downloadable applications rule: Interestingly, most offerings which use GPRS at the back-end are offered as downloadable applications that the users download by visiting a WAP site or through the PC. After this one-time download, users just run these menu-driven applications to choose what he/she wants to do and the applications connect at the back-end to the site as needed to access information and complete transactions. Few have chosen WAP sites as the preferred way to connect to the customers. The notable exceptions are HDFC Bank, ICICI Direct, and Indigo Air. Of course, most media sites, Times of India, NDTV, Rediff and TV 18 have good content sites in WAP.

Mobile shopping emerging: One that caught our attention was the ngpay model, which is using its payment platform to offer much more than just payment. It has tied up with many partners and is offering products on sale through mobile. Amar Chitra Katha offers all its titles through ngpay. Other shopping that is available through ngpay is Asian Sky Shop, Ferns & Petals, Archies, Future Bazaar, and Landmark Book Store. We already see a reflection of online here. The ones that have succeeded online are on sale on mobile too. But there may be new surprises, going forward.

A DQ Report
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in

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