Enable M expands mobile VAS operations

According to Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the mobile content market in the country for 2004-05 was worth 558 crore. This is expected to reach 1,802 crore by 2007. Rising demand for handsets has led operators to offer services other than voice calls. Thus, Enable M, a part of Indbazaar.com started its operations, six months back realising the opportunity in the mobile Value Added Service (VAS) industry.

The initiative was backed by the investment arm of the Salora group of companies. Recently an investment arm of the $329 million Salora Group has picked up 20 percent stake for an undisclosed amount in Enable M. The investments is expected be used to drive the verticals in the company and further expand the product offering and market share. The stake will allow Salora to leverage its marketing, distribution muscle and helps Enable M to expand its arm with the new technology.

The company has developed a technology for learning Indian languages through Artificial Intelligence (AI) on mobile phones named Learn Indian Language through Artificial Intelligence (LILA) with C-DAC, Pune. LILA Hindi Prabodh will be available on mobile handsets through Multi-Media Cards (MMC). LILA can help individuals to learn Hindi from any languages as the company aims to promote Hindi in India.

Enable M works with various operators, aggregators and handset manufacturers to offer value added services in the mobile space. These services include a range of content and applications across multiple domains.  They have distribution agreements with operators and aggregators in nine countries including India, China, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, UAE, QATAR, Brazil, Spain and United States. creates manages content and community content in over 22 languages.

Yashwant Zaveri, MD, Enable M says, “Our team consist of 35 people taking care of the content designing and programming. We have plans to expand the team strength to 90 people. Our efforts are to set a unique standard and to tap the technology to the fullest extent.” He further adds, “In future we plans to focus on social networking, mobile content and applications. At present we have no plans to compose ring tones as many companies are already providing the same”

The company will also focus on vertical content, for instance lawyers can get access to legal content. The company also plans to open offices internationally and develop strong database by conducing surveys and research. Enable M is also offering multilingual content and is also focusing on developing products, which will increase the user base for VAS by going regional on one hand while tapping the global markets on the other. The company is working with over 40 partners and is all set for key launches in China and Europe, besides the domestic market.

Its strategic partnership for advanced technologies coupled with strengths in content development and procurement, has resulted in a base of over 150 applications at various stages of development and deployment. The company’s applications and services are spread across various platforms such as J2ME, BREW, SYMBIAN, Flash Lite to name a few.