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In April this year, Bharti Airtel introduced sachet model in telecom business by offering video content for just Re 1. During the first three months, average data consumption increased by about 117% to 27.3 megabytes and number of data users has also increased. However, while it sounds affordable, consumers actually end up paying about 65% more than the usual data plans.
The back-end technology of this model, which is convenient and sounds affordable to consumers, was actually developed by California-based video company Vucilp. Vuclip, which was founded by Indian American, is backed by SingTel’s Innov8, NEA and Jafco Ventures.
With the success of this sachet model in India, Vuclip is now planning to take this model to other countries. “We are in talks with the leading operators in a few countries, such as Indonesia, Malyasia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE),” said Vuclip co-founder and chief executive officer Nickil Jakatdar.
The company is also talking to other telecom operator where Singtel has investments to introduce the model. Interestingly, Singtel has a little more than 32% stake in Bharti Airtel. “We are trying to keep the ‘one’ number as base with every local currency in respective countries,” said Jakatdar.
To offer buffer free streaming and to keep usage of bandwidth within limit so that it remains profitable for the operators, developers and the content providers, Jakatdar said, Vuclip had to reduce sizes of the videos keeping the quality at “reasonably” good level. “We worked out on a strategy to slice the content into very small pieces (like 2 second clips, 5 or 10 second clips). So that there is no buffer,” he added. Typically videos offered for Re 1 consume about 1-5 megabytes of data.
Not just the Re 1 model, Jakatdar said the company is now working on other sachets models, in associations with operators, where consumers would get about 10 videos for about Rs 5. “Volume is important. Just Re 1 model may not be a long-term game,” he added.
On the other hand, Vuclip has a video hub that is currently accessed by about 80 million users through their smartphones. It has about 20 million users in the West Asian countries, about 20 million in the South Asian region, about 10-12 million in Latin America and the remaining in Africa.
“We offer videos that are tailored each consumer, and is delivered in compressed formats that make sense for your devices and carriers. We are able to deliver videos on the fly on any device and in any country,” said Jakatdar, adding that video content should not be restricted to just smartphone users and should be made available to all handheld devices.
Besides Bharti Airtel, Vuclip has arrangements with UTV Motion Pictures, Reliance Entertainment and Vodafone in India. Recently, it started offering full movies on mobile phones for Rs 15.
Recently, Bharti Airtel had said that Bollywood movie songs videos are most popular, followed by fashion videos. And, interestingly, about 80% of these offers is being availed of by the feature phone users.
With the success of Re 1 video model, Bharti Airtel, however, has launched of its virtual Rs 1 Entertainment Store where consumers would get music, video, games, photos and internet browsing packages for Re 1. Also, by paying Re 1, consumers can have 3 megabytes of data usage limit for one full day to access Facebook, Yahoomail, Twitter and LinkedIn.
