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Internet And Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) organised the Mobile Internet
Conference on 26
th
November, 2013 in New Delhi. IMI Mobile, Paytm and WATConsult
were the Platinum, Silver and Social Media Sponsors respectively.
There are now 2.4 Billion Internet users worldwide, registering an 8% year over year
growth. Considering the total world population, there is still a great scope for growth
and development. For a fact that must be noted, many of these internet users are not
only accessing the web using their mobile phones, but in many cases this is their only
way to access the web. With 1.5 billion Smartphone users worldwide and counting,
mobile web traffic now accounts for 15% and is growing 1.5x per year and likely to
maintain its trajectory or accelerate according to reports. This is majorly because the
users enjoy the simplicity and portability of mobile. Smartphone users feel connected,
eager, involved, interested and productive which shows why they check their
Smartphones an average of 150 times per day. The lesson here is that mobile users are
engaged and the mobile platform represents an opportunity for delivering great
learning experiences and implementing marketing exercises.
The Mobile Internet Conference, 2013 aimed at exploring and discussing the avenues
for the evolution of Mobile Internet & Value Added Services in a channelized and
productive manner to reach to a win-win situation for both the service providers and
the consumers.
The Conference was organised with a view to work out a general scheme and plan to
assure adequate access to mobile internet and VAS services at a reasonable expenditure
and in a transparent manner through various mobile internet service providers. There
were discussions on ways to create a favourable environment to drive mobile internet
and its applications and work out business models that are conducive to push its
growth. The conference touched upon the various challenges that have proved to be
impediments for the platform and looked at bridging the digital divide.
The Mobile Internet Conference commenced with the Inaugural Session on Mobile
Data: Today and Tomorrow. The Inaugural Address was delivered by Ravi
Sundarajan, Chief Revenue Officer at Webaroo. In his speech, Mr Sundarajan talked
of the entire journey of the evolution of the web with special reference to the influx of
mobile environment in the Indian context. It was then time for Vikram Tiwathia,
Associate Director General at COAI to deliver the Welcome Address. Vikram stressed

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upon important issues that need to be addressed in order to bridge the gap between the
current state and the desired state in the Indian Mobile domain vis--vis the internet
and value added services. He mentioned how the demographic conditions in India could
act as a catalyst in the process of proliferation of mobile internet amongst the masses.
According to him, the affordability, accessibility and compression techniques pertinent
to the mobile internet service could help India become the largest consuming nation of
Mobile Internet in the world in a short span of time. This was followed by the Special
Address by Artur Mas, Honourable President of Catalonia. In his speech, he gave a
vivid picture of the state of Catalonia, its economy, financial drivers, main attractions
and demographic details. Though he stated the fact of disparity between India and
Catalonia in several respects, he exclaimed, India and Catalonia could be compared in
terms of the entrepreneurial spirit amongst their citizens. He explained how the
platform of mobile internet has helped their nations tourism sector achieve
tremendous popularity and financial success with relatively very low investment. With
this note, the Inaugural Session came to a close.
The first plenary session was conducted on the topic Mobile Internet: from 95 to 300
million the roadmap. This session was moderated by Ravi Sundarajan, Chief
Revenue Officer at Webaroo and had panelists like Sanjay Goyal, Founder & CEO at
ACL Mobile, Vivek Jain, Executive Vice President at Naukri Product and Analytics,
Nikhil Naik, Director- Global Distribution and Content at Vuclip, Ravi Jakhar,
Managing Director at Ice X Electronics and Tarun Abhichandani, Group Business
Director at IMRB International. This session addressed topics like ways in which
stakeholders can make Mobile as the primary mode of accessing Internet, whether
mobile internet has reached its tipping as yet, how would 300 million change the
business model for platform providers, operators, VAS and Internet companies and
what new challenges and opportunities it might open up. The session was concluded
after the audience interaction by the session moderator.
Monetization on mobile internet- the realistic story was the central theme of the
second session. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder, One97 Communications & Paytm
was the lead presenter while Dippak Khurana, CEO & Co-founder, Vserv.mobi was
the moderator for the session. Aniketh Jain, CEO at Solutions Infini, Kenny Ye,
Managing Director at UC Web, Anurag Dod, CEO & Founder at AdiQuity, Martin
Villig, VP Strategic Projects at Fortumo were the august panelists for this session.
New emerging monetization opportunities with growth of Mobile Internet penetration
was the most talked about subject in this session. Besides, there were discussions on
topics like growth of OTT, operators compensation measures and their perception of
the evolved ecosystem, and the need of alternative payment systems for micro
payments.
There was also a Special Presentation by Jordi Majo, Director Economic
Development Programme at Mobile World Capital. The theme of the presentation
was the challenge of mobile transformation: the reality of social change and the

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challenge of an economic transformation. The presentation talked at length about the
Mobile World Capital Barcelona and its various programmes, centres, festivals and
assets.
The session post lunch had Mobile Money+ Mobile Commerce: Current and
Emerging Models and Roadblocks as its subject of discussion. Sriram J, Chief
Executive Officer at Airtel M Commerce and Sunil Kulkarni, Dy. Managing Director
at Oxigen Services were the Lead Presenter and Session Moderator respectively. Other
Speakers in the Session were Santosh Rao, Head Marketplace Experience at eBay
India, Abhinav Mathur, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer at Spice Digital and
Dheeraj Bhardwaj, Assistant Vice President at Immediate Payment Service. This
session addressed issues like the key barriers to growth of Mobile Payments, challenges
in developing most practical and consumer friendly solutions for Mobile Payments at
retail POS, Strategies for executing go-to-market mobile shopping, and the status of
preparedness of the mobile payment enablers for the Mobile Commerce Shift.

The fourth and the final session was on Mobile apps- will they start controlling our
lives sooner rather than later? Abhijit Saxena, Founder and CEO at Mobilox was
the moderator for this session while Ramesh Raman, Senior Manager- Marketing at
IMI Mobile, Rahul Razadan, Director at 10C India (We Chat) and Raghu
Venkataraman, Head- Big Data and Digital Services at Nielsen were the Panelists.
Opportunities and challenges for apps developers, apps deployment beyond domestic
markets, harnessing the power of imagination, strengthening businesses through
widening engagement vis--vis interactive networking, improving access to education,
health care, banking, and similar subjects were talked about in this session. The session
closed with a Q&A interaction with the audience and with that the Mobile Internet
Conference, 2013 which proved to be a very successful, enlightening and enriching
event, was concluded.