The Hindu Business Line : Star expanding Plus m-commerce business

Having recently launched a platform to provide a one-point gateway to a bouquet of mobile services, Star India has now tied up with handset maker Sony Ericsson to bring its mobile content services to users of the brand. Under the partnership, the mobile service launched by Star’s mobile entertainment division will be exclusively pre-embedded on a range of Sony Ericsson phones in India.

The first batch of the new phones is expected to arrive in India from Sony Ericsson’s factory next week. “The service will be embedded across some 15 models of Sony Ericsson. We expect this development to significantly broaden our mobile services customer base,” Mr Viren Popli, Senior Vice-President (Mobile Entertainment) of Star India, told Business Line.

The mobile service, named Plus, will give easy access to Sony Ericsson users to over 200 videos of TV, music and Bollywood genres every month. It also provides TV show info, unlimited access to sports scores and updates, movie reviews, music downloads, news, mobile banking services through HDFC Bank, travel booking and information on lifestyle products.

It was earlier this year that Star launched the Plus service that was designed for consumers to catch up on TV, search for information, shop and bank while on the move through their GPRS mobile phones. Now the company plans to develop this service into a full-fledged m-commerce solution.

“The potential in the m-commerce space is tremendous. We plan to add new services like auction, e-commerce, insurance services and mobile ticketing in the future. And later, it can be used for user-generated networking,” Mr. Popli said.

India is estimated to have 250 mobile phone users, out of which at least 10 per cent are mobile Internet users. And it is this group that Star is targeting for its mobile services.

Star has tied up with several brands to develop Plus. For example, it is partnering with HDFC for banking and related services, MakeMyTrip, TravelGuru and Yatra for travel and ticketing, Infomedia Group for Yellow Pages information, Universal Music for music content, Overdrive for information on cars, AVMAX for audiophiles and Chip for computing information.

Monthly fee

At present, Star has 40,000 mobile phone users as its customers for Plus, which is provided for a fee of Rs 30 per month.

While this fee is at present the only revenue stream from Plus, the company intends to use the service to create a new medium for advertisement. The waiting period during downloads into the mobile set could be used for advertisement, which will provide another revenue stream from Plus. “We plan to introduce advertisement at a later date when we would have significantly expanded our customer base,” Mr. Popli said.

Star is also planning a second round of advertisement campaign for Plus, which will include a TV campaign featuring an animation clipping.

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