With the imminent launch of 3G spectrum services in India, the demand for mobile value added services (mVAS) and mVAS professionals for this sunrise industry is likely to grow exponentially
Mobile VAS (value added services) offer hot new career opportunities in the commu-nications tech space to young professionals. As per the forecast of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), mobile telecom VAS revenue is expected to grow by 30 percent per year over the next five to seven years, which is way higher than its current annual growth rate of 10-12 percent. According to TRAI, the telecom VAS industry revenue is expected to touch Rs.100,000 crore in 2020 (cf. Rs.15,000 crore per year currently). With the imminent launch of 3G spectrum telecom services (faster data speed) in India, there will be an exponential demand for an array of new features and services — games downloads, mCommerce, video strea-ming, mobile blogs and mobile chat.
As the IT industry matures, public demand for creating IT applications for mobile handsets is increasing commensurately. According to NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies), the $50 billion Indian software ind-ustry is set to maintain its scorching double digit annual growth rate in the second decade of the 21st century.
With leapfrogging demand for mVAS, there will be a huge require-ment of professionals in this new industry. Currently there are over 100 mVAS companies in India and within the next five years, their number will double with the demand for mVAS professionals (currently estimated to be around 15,000-20,000) expected to grow at a conservative estimate to 75,000-100,000 in the next three to five years.
The possibilities in this vast and creative industry are limitless. You could be a content writer, games developer or designer of e-commerce platforms and technologies. Radical new careers in the mobile telephony industry are as yet beyond the horizon.
Ideally, professionals in the develop-ing mVAS industry need a telecom engineering background. For core mVAS functions, the demand is for graduates in computer science, electrical and computer engineering (ECE), IT and MCA. However, for mVAS sales and marketing, an MBA diploma/degree after acquiring an engineering degree is ideal. Nowadays there are specialised postgrad telecom business management diploma/degrees offered by several reputed institutes including the Symbi-osis Institute of Telecom Management, Pune, the Balaji Institute of Telecom Management, Pune, and Amity Busi-ness School, Noida. However, fresh recruits are generally trained on the job.
Unsurprisingly, the pay of mVAS trainees is good. Pay packets range between Rs.12,000-17,000 per month at entry level, and expect fast-track growth from trainee to executive manager.
“With 12 big and small mobile telephony service providers country-wide and many of them active in all the 23 telecom ‘circles’ into which the country is divided for spectrum alloca-tion, the number of people employed in this industry runs into hundreds of thousands. Apart from that, there are almost 100 specialist mVAS companies operational in India. Since the number of mobile telephone subscribers has crossed 650 million, the growth in demand for mVAS professionals could be to the tune of 25-30 percent annually,’’ says Dr. Debasis Chatterji, chief executive of Netxcell, a leading telecom applications provider with a customer base of more than 200 million, which has pioneered the concept of mVAS in the country.
With 23 years of experience in the telecom and mVAS industry, Chatterji is the brain behind the launch of Netxcell’s Mobismart portal which is a mix of hosted voice exchange for automated voice dialling and bulk SMS (data) transmission. After graduating in science from Kalyani University, West Bengal, in 1985 he acquired a postgrad degree from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Delhi. Chatterji began his professional career in a life science company (BIO Rad Pacific Ltd) as a product executive, served with Rohm Enzyme GmbH as country manager (1994-2000) followed by Elgen India as chief operating officer (2000-2004).
In 2005, Chatterji signed up with Netxcell as chief executive. Under his stewardship, the company has grown steadily, recording an aggregate income of Rs.26 crore in 2009-10 — a 100 percent increase over the previous fiscal.
“The indian telecom industry has been growing at a remarkable pace over the past decade with the mobile telephony industry, perhaps the fastest growing worldwide. With the conclusion of 3G spectrum auctions recently and operators ready to roll out mVAS, this growth is likely to be sustained further by 2 percent every month. With the advent of third generation telephony, mobile telephone subscribers will have the advantage of better services and telecom companies will need to maintain innovative mobile value added services to retain customer loyalty in the increasingly competitive market. In short, the premium on mVAS profes-sionals is unlikely to abate in the foreseeable future,” says Chatterji.
For the multiplying number of mobile telephony addicts in the subcontinent, as also for the growing number of mVAS professionals, that’s an exciting prospect.
Indra Gidwani (Mumbai)