At Momo Delhi, a need was felt for an application that serves as a gateway to several services to drive GPRS usage. Almost on cue, Star India has announced the launch of an independent application called Plus. They’ve already tied up with Makemytrip and Travelguru for travel, Infomedia for yellow pages, Ganesha Speaks by Bejan Daruwala for astrological content, Universal Music, and magazines like Chip, AV Max, T3 and Overdrive. It also has TV listings, sports content, and more. The application is expected to be made available around the end of February. I got the opportunity to try it out, and noticed a flash screen advertising KBC during data transfer. There was also a ticker on the top part of the screen, which could be used for advertising. I spoke to Viren Popli, Sr.VP – Wireless Interactive, STAR about the service:

Is this product going to be advertisement supported?
Our first goal is to create a platform to drive GPRS usage. The mobile isn’t really built for advertising, but once you have people, you build advertising into it. We don’t know much about the customer in the current mobile environment, just that they are not willing to accept ads pushed to them. We have the option that when you’re waiting for content to download, we can put in a flash screen with advertisements. But right now, there isn’t a market in place for it.
How much is it going to cost the consumer?
We’re going to do a free trial period initially, and are probably going to charge a subscription fee between Rs.45-60 a month. The cost of downloaded content is going to be separate.
What will be the payment mechanism?
There are two types of payments - one is the monthly subscription, and other is download fee. We will be billing through the operator, and don’t intend to change that in the future. We might work with other payment mechanisms later, but we’re not considering that option right now.
How long has this project been in the works, and who’s made the application?
IMI Mobile and ITFinity have worked on the application. The project was conceptualized over a year ago, and we started working on it around June last year.
Did you do any trials or research for this?
We did some focus group interactions. We also learnt a lot from our 7827 experience in the non-metro areas, where we found that people have issues with remembering short codes. They have problems even with internet access because the PC is a tech nightmare for them - It’s all in English, then the website address has to be typed etc. our core audience is women, we found a huge fear of technology. We’re working on other languages, and Hindi will be the next to be implemented. The whole idea behind this move is increasing the use of GPRS.
Did you consider doing a WAP site instead of an application?
The problem with a WAP site is the time taken for it to load. This is an application that sits on your phone, and you can access the menu quickly. This way, it only takes time when downloading content.
Is the content going to be hosted with you or the operator, since there have been issues of billing leakages?
Everything will be hosted with us. Every day we are uploading around 20 videos and lots of other content. It has to be in a central location.
What are your plans for marketing this product?
We will initially run a campaign. We’re first talking to operators, who stand to gain most from it with increased GPRS usage. When the GPRS usage increases, the operator gets a business case with 30-40 bucks a month spend per user. We’ll run a campaign with all our partners. We’re also considering other ways of pushing the application - it could be pre-installed on memory cards along with some content.
Interesting to see STAR take on an aggregation role in the mobile space…
As broadcasters, we are aggregators of content. This is about building a platform and taking on an aggregation role to increase GPRS usage. We feel that sticking to just one thing is not going to drive uptake. The Indian consumer is not going to be excited by just one thing, so we’re offering many services.
Have other channels been keen on it?
Some other channels are extremely keen, since it a standalone application, and each channel doing its own application doesn’t make much sense. This is the reason for designing and branding it as an independent platform: there is no ‘STAR’ on it. We’re in the middle of discussion with other channels.

screencaps from a simulation here. So far, the only issue I see with this service is that of GPRS speed which not only is slow, but also kills the battery. The other issue that could arise is that if too many companies sign up for this platform - the sheer amount of content available could be overwhelming. Initially, though, the more the content, the greater the probability of adoption.