Sriram Jagannathan, CEO, mCommerce, Bharti Airtel mentioned that financial inclusion and mobile payents looks like a gold rush. The reason why they have become very popular is because of the huge scale of opportunity. So big it is that it has drawn well meaning people from the private industry to forego high salaries to join organization like UID and such organization that can make a bigger impact. Just as rising tides lifts all boats, a 3 % GDP growth will help everyone.

He mentioned that money transfer in real form will not be scalable and is actually an impediment to growth. Creating merchants who accept ecash is very important in helping people migrate to ecash.

In India, there are 12 million unorganized retail merchants. Its not a single point of access. If a mobile phone is available with everyone, then that should be the instrument which can be used as a mobile payment system. This is a solution that can take care of scalability problem.

The Telco can play a big role here. While the Telco cannot make big money from mobile money, they can provide very high value added benefit. When users see the value that they benefit from, then they will be begin using the mobile lot more which eventually adds in the interest of the Telcos.

Sriram mentioned that there are3 roles for Telcos to play: Open accounts, Drive usage and create money agents.

Ravishankar will be speaking at IAMAI’s 3rd Financial Inclusion & Digital Payment Conference, to be held at Mumbai on 6th of August 2010.

Ravishankar is an experienced Banker with over 15 years of experience in Indian and Global Banking. He has special Interest in E commerce, M commerce, Payment and Settlement systems, Cards and Banking technology.

Ravishankar is the Co-Founder and CEO of Nevales Business Networks. He is also the Chairman of the Board for Nevales. He was also a part of the Founding team at YES BANK, India’s fastest growing and best mid sized bank. Prior to YES BANK he worked with ABN AMRO for 8 years and HDFC Bank for 2 years. Innovations in Internet Banking, Contact Center and Mobile Payment technologies lead by him at YES BANK, received Global Recognition. His last assignment was as Group Executive Vice President and Country Head Direct Banking and Cash Management at YES BANK.

Ravishankar is frequent speaker at the top Industry events on Banking and Payments Technologies across Asia. He is a member of various industry associations on banking and payments. Excellent communication and leadership skills have enabled him to build great teams and partnerships across the world.

Ravishankar has an MBA in Marketing and a Bachelor Degree in Economics.

Company Profile:
Nevales Networks was established in January 2010. Nevales Networks offers small and Medium Business’s a secure environment to conduct their business on a ‘Pay as You Use’ model. This secure platform is delivered over the Internet with free 24×7 support and is free from licensing, scalability and maintenance hassles, there by providing the best value for money and allowing SMBs to focus on their core businesses.

Nevales Networks, in addition to keeping SMB networks safe from the common threats from the Internet, also empowers them to conduct business with services and applications for Connectivity, Communication, Transactions and Business (Accounting, HR, CRM, ERP, Office applications etc) using Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

Find more about Nevales Networks on their corporate website or follow them on twitter

Bikky Khosla (born 30 July 1960) in Delhi is an entrepreneur and Chief Executive Officer of tradeindia.com. He is younger brother of Vinod Khosla, an Indian venture capitalist. He is also chairman on ASSOCHAM SME’s Expert Committee.

He is the first-generation entrepreneur who revolutionized the Indian dotcom industry in trade, connecting buyers and sellers from across the globe, facilitating easy and smooth business. With a lofty vision of serving the trade community of India, Mr. Khosla conceptualized Infocom Network Ltd. in 1991.

In the nineties the dotcom industry saw a boom swaying in the trade community under its grip. Mr. Khosla decided to deliver something extra to the trade community and this marked the beginning of India’s first B2B portal in 1996 for exporters and importers – tradeindia.com.

The portal provided a platform to buyers and sellers across the world irrespective of distance, size and position of exporters, importers and service providers in diverse arenas.

About the portal:

His company has recently released a study on Indian SMEs (small and medium enterprises) based on a survey it conducted jointly with industry body ASSOCHAM. The report will be submitted to the Indian government. The study was an effort to make the authorities aware of hurdles faced by SMEs (small and medium enterprises) all over India.

Watch the Podcast with Suman Srivastava, CEO,Euro RSCG, conducted by Kiruba Shankar on the sidelines of Marketing Conclave…

Suman Srivastava, CEO,Euro RSCG from kiruba on Vimeo.

For more such podcasts, visit www.kiruba.tv

Keynotes from Sundeep Malhotra’s(CEO,Homeshop18) talk

1. There’s difference between Teleshopping & Homeshop18

Teleshopping is very product specific; Homeshop18 is a virtual mall(instead of a shelf, there’s TV)

Teleshopping works on getting ad slots on TV channels; Homeshop18 is a TV channel (No need for any slots)

2. Homeshop displays the products better than any other retail format

3. In 2 years, Homeshop has crossed 2Mn. customers; 1 customer is added every 6 seconds

4. Homeshop accounts for 5% of all digital cameras sold in india; It’s is the largest retailer for reebok

5.Homeshop has 800 people team managing 5oo brands across  every conceivable product category

6. A TV channel like Homeshop18 converts eyeballs into transactions; Viewership into customers

7. The revenue of Homeshop18 is not from advertisement but from transactions

8. The major challenge is to build confidence. Therefore, the focus is on selling branded products

9. Internet is not as interactive as TV; it works as a catalogue for what’s on TV

10. Customers prefer to use the internet more to spread the message that they have purchased a product via a TV channel and find similar people who can validate that it is OK to do that

11. There’s  a lot of scope to sell various products via a TV channel; Homeshop18 is already selling Jewellery and insurance products and plan to get into Real Estate

12. Payment mechanisms have and will evolve with time. Homeshop18 is one of the 1st ones to introduce Cash-on-delivery model which is not without its challenges (Customer may change his/her mind; courier boys may run away with the money, etc). these challenges are being taken care of in their unique ways

13. TV is a very strong medium and would continue to grow as we move ahead and internet would form a great support system and would eveolve with time

Atul Phadnis (CEO, What’s on India) talked about outlook for television industry, focusing on the overload of channels and challenges in selecting right content…

What’s on India is India’s first TV guidance channel. No. of Tv channels has grown from 60 channels to 200+ channels… How do people chose programs to watch? Almost 70% of TV watching in India is unplanned. That’s where TV guidance channels come to help.

Key areas: Content creation, search, consumption, distribution effects and IPR

First aspect is Democratization of Content production. Content creation is becoming easier and cheaper-both for TV and print fields. Web is making it even simpler. Lowering entry barriers and niches-is the second aspect.

Traditional workflows are under stress. We’re moving towards Universal newsrooms – same content is fed to TV, web, mobile and so on… This is bringing traditional and new media closer.

We facilitate viewers to find content of their choice. Clearly there is a content and information overload… There’s fragmenting viewership, creating thinner slices. TV content can be categorized into 3: Premium paid content, middle layer which is funded through advertising and paid subscription and 3rd is free.

There’s very poor targeting. Mobility and Malleability are 2 new traits in a digital world. Devices are changing the mode of media consumption.

Trend is shifting from scheduled consumption to anytime consumption. Ratings for hit programs are falling due to too many channels. In 2002, 16% of India watching the show would make you No. one program. Today if 6% watch you are no 1…

Regulator and govt are not geared quick enough. Viewer is not getting the controversial content on tv but he turns to internet for the same. Speed of regulation and understanding of governance on old and new media are the topic of discussion.

As mentioned in the earlier post, I did a bit of Googling to know more about the speakers of Marketing Conclave…

As I was searching for Suman Srivastava, I promptly landed on his blog,
http://sumansrivastava.blogspot.com/

His recent post mentions his tweets made during India Today Conclave, held recently in New Delhi

Aroon Purie starts the conclave with the opening passage from “tale of 2 cities” – “it was the best of times..worst of times…” #ITconclave

Charles Dickens still relevant to describe the first decade of the 21st century. #ITconclave

Chidambaram says Maoists are a bigger threat than Jihadists. #ITconclave

read more

Suman is also very active on twitter. You can follow him at @suman7…

Digging further, I also found that Suman had spoken at an earlier IAMAI event, 4th Conference on Digital Marketing, wherein he spoke about video advertisements…

Watch the webcast here http://www.24framesdigital.com/iamai/300908/suman_srivastava.htm

Join us at Marketing Conclave next week to meet Suman