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By Nandita Singh
With over two decades of IT and telecom industry experience behind him, GV Kumar, the founder and CEO of XIUS, a telecom technology product company, has come up with an innovative consortium approach to enable the companies applying for Virtual Network Operator (VNO) license in India, after the sector was thrown open earlier in 2016 to fast track Digital India mission. At the XIUS Global Delivery Center in Hyderabad, Telangana, in an interview with Voice&Data, Kumar elaborates on how XIUS is enabling VNO aspirants and contributing to the VNO ecosystem in India.
Voice&Data: Tell us about XIUS, its focus and what you are trying to achieve in India market?
GV Kumar: XIUS started as a telecom software products company and remains so till date. All our products are based on intellectual property (IP) generated at XIUS. We have filed over 120 patent applications. Our first product in 2000 was enabling roaming on pre-paid SIM. At that point of time, this service enabling realtime authentication on pre-paid SIM, was not available anywhere in the world. We invented a new method to enable this – here in India. The first call was made between Mumbai and Pune. Innovation is the DNA of XIUS. Our philosophy is to bring about a fundamental change in the delivery of telecommunication services to subscribers.
Next, XIUS developed a pre-paid core billing platform and went to market with it winning tenders… Our customer base includes MTNL, Vodafone, Aircel and RPG among others
In 2004, XIUS was merged with Megasoft, the IT services company. (Both the companies have a common investor Peepul Capital, formerly iLabs, and Kumar at the helm.) After expanding first five years in India market and then having the access to US market post-merger with Megasoft, in 2005-06, we realized that value size of deals for our platforms were five-six times larger in US market as compared to India, which was a low paying market. Even though India telecom subscriber base was literally booming post 2005 we turned our focus on western markets for better returns and by 2009, 90% of our revenues were coming from the US… It is only recently with the India market opening up for VNOs, we have started looking at the India opportunity.
- Read: What is an MVNO?
Voice&Data: So, how are you going about tapping the India opportunity?
GV Kumar: We have put in place an end-to-end integrated offering for VNOs to enable them to go live in the shortest possible timeframe. Our telecom product brand XIUS is positioned as Mobile Virtual Network Enabler (MVNE) and we have taken a consortium approach to deliver this offering.
We have UK-based Hebitel, a global provider of MVNO management consulting services and Delhi, India-based device management company KocharTech to provide customer service facilities to VNOs in India. Besides, we are tying up with another key player to complete the overall offering and you will hear about that too soon enough. Both Hebitel and KocharTech come with deep hands-on business expertise and bring to the table critical components of the integrated offering to India market.
Between XIUS, Hebitel and KocharTech, the team covers most key areas needed to launch a VNO. While XIUS provides the VNO & Payments Platform, essentially technology and integration services, that enable VNOs to deliver and manage the telephony products, Hebitel provides globally experienced VNO executive staff that takes care of all the launch activities right from license application, market identification and business planning to providing experienced interim staff for launch. And KocharTech provides customer service facilities and tools to keep the telephony product up and running ship-shape.
Voice&Data: Your views on size of the market opportunity … how many VNOs do you think will emerge in India in the next two to five years?
GV Kumar: The size of market opportunity is in the range of $4 billion. The pre-paid telephony market is far more mature in India and Asia than in other parts of the world, I would say. In India, 90% of the connections are pre-paid. The corresponding figure in Europe is 50% while Middle East is 80% and Latin America is also over 90% pre-paid connections. The US market since the beginning of this decade has been mainly a contract-driven market from operator’s perspective. Keeping in view market dynamics, the potential for providing niche VNO services in India is varied, much more that any other geography because of cultural heritage and language based diversity the country has. This apart specific needs of the various demographics of the society will drive the VNO market. The field is open to imagination. For eg., there is no reason why a municipality cannot be a VNO and deliver citizen services directly… It’s difficult to say though how many VNOs will spring up in India market in the next few years. It all depends on the regulatory environment, ease of business and imaginative entrepreneurs who can come up with use cases and business models that provide value to all stakeholders.
Related: VNOs: Get Ready for Co-opetition