Operators Must Utilize Monetization Opportunities in the A2P Space

At a time when telecom operators look for better utilization of their existing investments – Application to Person or A2P messaging holds big monetization potential for the telecoms community.

Aditya Dhruva, Vice President and Head of Messaging & Broadband Solutions, Mahindra Comviva speaks with Zia Askari from TelecomDrive.com about the untapped A2P market and why operators should be utilizing opportunities in this space.

How does the company look at opportunities in the A2P messaging space?

A2P messaging space is one of the prime focus of Mahindra Comviva’s Messaging and Broadband solutions unit. We see a bright future for us ahead in this space. The operators currently are not focused on monetizing from the A2P messaging opportunities (because of the belief that investments in messaging platforms won’t have long-term ROI).

However, the promise of monetization from A2P messaging – through prevention of revenue leakage from grey routes and through enablement of enterprise customer communication – is not something operators would ignore in the longer run. We as a company look at being an enabler for operators to monetize from the growing A2P messaging space

How big would be this market in India and globally?

Globally, the market is projected to reach $60 billion in 2020, with a CAGR of 35.5%. The volume would be 3.4 trillion messages by 2020, projected to more than double from the volume of 1.38 trillion in 2015. The Indian market is projected to be a $2.4 billion industry, with a total volume of 390 million messages by 2020.

What are some of the innovative solutions that you as a brand are putting forward in the market?

Telecom companies are losing up to 90 per cent of revenue from A2P messaging to entities who are using grey routes to terminate the traffic. 75 per cent of telecom companies do not have any control over these grey routes and are thus unable to leverage the potential of A2P messaging. Operators need solutions that focus on identifying this increasing problem from SMS and loss of revenues through grey routes. Mahindra Comviva enables operators with a comprehensive modular solution offering to combat this revenue loss, generate revenues by monetizing A2P traffic and protect subscribers from spam and fraud. Our three pronged strategy to enable operators maximise the full potential of A2P Messaging is:

• To Ring-fence the network to block grey routes and curb revenue losses through our Firewall Solution,
• Enhance engagement with enterprises to ensure hassle-free integration with our Ngage Messaging Platform
• Offer business consulting services to identify and analyse various patterns of fraud in the network, and to safeguard the network against new fraud mechanisms 

What kind of industries are adopting such solutions and how do you plan to expand the market opportunities?

Across the globe, in developed and developing nations alike, enterprises are looking for solutions that enable them to reach customers faster and better. We have seen the enterprise communication being adopted by various industries like:

• Retail (Order confirmation, delivery dispatches, delivery updates etc.)
• Finance (Alerts, OTPs, Transaction Verifications etc.)
• Transport (Freight/asset monitoring, delivery tracking, connected car, Navigation, Ticketing etc)
• Healthcare (Clinic search, test results, information dissemination etc)
• Logistics (Delivery delays, updates, track shipments, secure rates and delivery times, and schedule pick-ups)
• Education, Government departments, Energy & Utilities etc.

Mahindra Comviva enables enterprises to engage better, drive innovation, create a strong suite of services that enhances the brand image and deliver cost effective, immediate and personalized communications through its Ngage platform- multi channel mobile engagement solution.

Reduced Time-to-market is one of the most important factors for extending services to any enterprise. We aim to achieve this through our Self On-boarding feature which enables quick on-boarding of small, medium and large enterprises and usage of the services immediately through quick purchase and enablement of packs.

As the industries adapt more to the growing A2P market, there would be new innovative use-cases like Interactive surveys, social-media communication, multi-channel campaigns etc. We are already the leader in enabling such use-cases resulting in an improved effectiveness for enterprise communications.

Not all enterprise messages have same priority. Financial use-cases like OTP, or governmental alerts on natural disasters would take a higher priority as compared to promotional messages. Our platform helps in enabling such priorities for various type of transactions and also enables differential charging according to priorities.

Please share your go to market strategy in India?

We already have deployed our mobile engagement solution - Ngage platform with majority of the operators in India. Our next steps would be to help operators get more enterprises on-board with our managed services team.

We would also enable new use-cases like contextual marketing, location-based campaigns etc. Also, we would look at partnering with central and state governments to handle various use-cases like polling, communication of natural disasters and reliefs etc.  To ensure that operators maximize the full potential of A2P messaging, our immediate strategy would be to partner with the operators to help them protect their network from revenue leakages through grey routes. Our business consulting arm would fast-track this through the identification of revenue leakage patterns.

How do you look at opportunities in the IoT space today, how do you plan to tap these opportunities?

We are banking on our traditional messaging business to leverage opportunities in the IOT space. Internet enabled devices would need not just the telecom infrastructure but also a variety of services to be launched with ease. IOT enabled devices would need the right APIs to integrate with different systems.

For example, a “Connected Home” system would need connectivity to Facebook Messenger, or Telegram, or any other built in app to communicate the various states of the devices connected at home. Users should be able to send messages or trigger events based on messaging as a communication channel or data as a communication channel.

Such IOT devices would have the necessary hardware in place, however, the APIs to integrate to multiple services would need to be in a plug-play form so that future communication channels can also be addressed. Comviva looks to tap these opportunities where we can drive a variety of use cases that will provide an enriching user experience when using IOT devices.