As part of what seems an effort to increase its ARPU, TATA DOCOMO is teaming-up with IMImobile to launch three value-added services in the south of India:
- The first service is Chalisaas of various Hindu Gods in regional languages. To access it, subscribers should dial 52345003 and choose a language of their preference. Chalisaas is available in Hanuman, Shani, Shiv, Durga and Tirupathi.
- The second offering, South Movie Masala, covers south movies, providing music, movie previews, film news, star bits and more in four Southern languages — including Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. The short code to access this service is 52345005.
- Finally, there’s Astro-Panchang which is made for customers following astrology. Those who subscribe by dialing 52345001 will be able to listen to their daily Astro predictions and Panchang (ancient Vedic astrology that helps you synchronize with your best days and times).
As you can figure out for yourself, all of the services are pretty basic and would be pretty much obsolete if many users in India had mobile Internet access on their phones. Hopefully, that will happen and we’ll see some rather more intelligent services being rolled out by the carriers in the country. In the meantime, it could be useful to think about various business ideas for the ever-growing mobile market of India…