Interview with Mr. Sukesh Jain, Head of VAS & Content at Bharti AirtelValue Added Services aka services other than voice services are a huge market potential for all mobile operators.

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This time we got lucky to get a chance to have a Q-A session with Sukesh Jain, Head, VAS & Content, Bharti Airtel – India’s largest mobile operator.

He discussed the focus of Airtel on VAS, its pricing, 3G VAS, m-Commerce and other related stuffs and gave his thoughtful comments.

TT: Earlier we consider non-voice services are value added services. Currently, is it true that SMS and data services are the key contributors of VAS revenues? Also why do you think that other services under VAS are not popular or contribute a larger chuck to Airtel’s VAS revenues?

Sukesh Jain: Yes, all non-voice services are tracked separately as ‘non-Voice revenues’. SMS and Data are surely some of the biggest categories in non-voice revenues.

However, contrary to popular opinion, there are multiple other services which are significant contributors to our VAS revenue. For instance, Hello Tunes, the ring back tone service, is one of the mainstay services of the VAS business. Other important revenue sources for the VAS business include services around Faith, Cricket & Sports, WAP downloads, Movies & Celebrities, etc.

Going forward, Airtel sees several new growth genres like Education, location based services and Health.

TT: Do you think that VAS prices are high and hence people consider offering like CRBT, CelebrityTalk, etc as luxury and hence poor adoption. Do you think that with a price rationalization will help massify VAS?

Sukesh Jain: I think that VAS prices are quite rational, else we would not have seen a healthy penetration of first generation VAS like Hello Tunes. Celebrity Talks also have seen upwards of a million subscribers – which is quite healthy given that the service has been introduced in recent times.