Indian Mobile Advertisement Player - Shooting Blindly

The Smartphone adoption and subsequent flood of startup's with mobility centric focus changed the dynamics of Advertisement market place. Few years back all brand were focusing on print or TV media whereas in current environment mobile advertisement segment is attracting investment as well as attention from the startup focusing on Mobile Application reaching out to Advertisement Network to acquire additional userbase to justify the investment they received from the investor as well as asking for further investment by showing growing Daily Active User's.

The double digit growth in Smartphone also prompted Ad Networks to enhance their platform to ensure that they deliver the number what Mobile Application providers are asking for. Most of the Ad Network made the fortune in the last 4 years and many new player jumped in to milk out easy revenue stream. The rush by the Application developer flushed in with funding helped the ecosystem grow faster than Industry but completely missed the attached innovation required to serve the end consumer as per their need as well as to acquire quality user with higher retention percentage. 

The Mobile Advertisement sector innovated unique mechanism to incentivize end consumer to get the download wherein tried to reduce the Cost of user acquisition for Application provider. Most of the incent wall offer recharge on he data and voice side but they don't tell end user that at the end they need to pay for  the data. In that scenario, end mobile user is paying more than what they are getting as return from these incent wall. On a contrary, The incent wall offer application listing to end consumer without knowing anything about it. I am writing the above as I have done extensive research on the pain point of end consumer what is being enforced onto end consumer. If one ask Mobile Advertisement company about it then they say that end user can block this by choosing disable advertisement which is generally placed in Non Incent wall.

The Indian Mobile Advertisement companies as well as Application Developer must move to next level of innovation by offering options to end consumer only post knowing end consumer.

India 4G Road map - Invest in On mobile Global with long Term Horizon

On mobile Global is one of the major players in Indian Mobile VAS ecosystem with strong presence across different geographies. Post MVAS regulation implementation in India during 2011-12, most of the Mobile Value Added Company underwent major shock wave and tried hard to cover themselves from direct and indirect impact. The Listed On mobile Global equity price went through major hammering. Investor also lost their confidence in Company Compliance which led to major CXO level exist.

On mobile Global during 2014, called as major laggard in Indian equity market when its price even went to INR 28 to 29 ranges. By Early 2015, management started putting all the building blocks of their product line and kept their focus on Ring back tone which helped them to gain Telephonic business in Europe to Americas whereas gain business from Airtel Africa unit. Management also managed to sell non performing business unit and invested the same in data centric business to offer data centric service, platform to B2B and B2C. It is expected that their investment in content procurement is going to bring fruit with the higher adoption by end consumer post data price war start between Incumbent Mobile Service Provider and Reliance Jio.

The equity price started recovering and by the end of 2015, On mobile Global equity gave excellent return to its investors. Currently the equity price is hovering between INR 115 to INR 124 and company is relying heavily on fully fledged adoption of 4G network by the end user. Most of On mobile global competitor changed their strategy and moved into the Application segment whereas On mobile global invested heavily on the platform side which kept their differentiation in the marketplace.

In my point of view, the dividend paying company as well as active share buyback on regular interval helped On mobile global to regain their investor confidence. I will not be surprised in a scenario, On mobile give further 50% return in next 12 month given the dynamics of Telecom sector in geographies they are operating.

In my point of view, retail investor should think of buying the equity on delivery basis rather than F&O basis to be on the safer side.

Disclaimer; I invested in Onmobile Global and advise reader or potential investor's to consult their financial advisor before investing

Indian Consumer Pains And Expectation From Application Providers– Tushar Singhal

India being one of the hot destinations for global and domestic mobility player to tap Indian mobility user’s from diverse categories. The active mobility user base of 740 million out of total registered mobile user base of 870 million created niche innovation segment focused towards mobile applications. The growing adoption of Smartphone which is more than 44 million in the last fiscal year communicated well about user adoption pattern on the device side. At the same time one must not ignore that feature phone market still command above 75% of the total device with most having data communication capabilities indicate that India users are still predominately cost and performance conscious. Most of the mobility users are moving from mobile operator hosted simple VAS services based on voice, SMS to data centric applications, product and services.

The Applications segment possess huge opportunity for niche and established players to gain maximum user base and inturn be differentiated. During the race of acquiring more user base, somewhere somehow; application developers completely ignored the need of mobility user. If one looks at the current model of applications offering, it is very clear that most of the brand especially e-commerce or entertainment or Games or classified or security or system tools specific applications are floating in each and every application centre. Indian mobility users which is using high end device with price tag of 15-25k should be considered as prosumer’s and may understand the mechanism of using such applications. During the process, application providers are retrieving all personal information of device user under the pretext of Terms and Condition and reuse it on multiple fronts. Indian device users are fond of such applications which are ONE TAP and fast. The expectations are of good quality video on demand or live TV but unfortunately, Indian mobility network is still under the evaluation end when it comes to data coverage. Even though Mobile operators are very aggressive in claiming that wireless data connectivity is good but they must come out of self imposed myth in order to identify the problem and solve it for the better mobile user retention.

As Indian mobility users are cost conscious and wants to have applications free but without imposed advertisements or flood of notification of additional applications. Indian applications market is ripe of applications which offer consumer information management which directly connect and solve consumer and prosumer daily life needs if Applications providers really needs to make loyal application user base. There are multiple applications offering device system tools which are nothing but the realigned application of Android feature set. There applications providers reaches out to end consumer in one or another medium and making consumer more confused. The solution providers of such applications must create tiered applications which seamless guide user or execute the functionalities offered to consumer. Lastly and most important the applications must be dynamic in populating information based on the inputs of consumer and prosumer choices.

Currently, mobility users are being used by Applications providers to create consumer adoption pattern module rather than fulfilling consumer needs and one should not be surprised in case of government watchdog jumps in to protect consumer privacy.