The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) in association with eBay India is organizing the 3rd National Conference on Digital Commerce with an aim to provide a clear understanding of customers’ expectations and how various industry constituents deal with digital commerce.

The conference will see the coming together of experts who will attempt to highlight ground realities and comprehend the Indian industry’s attitudes & perceptions vis-à-vis digital commerce. Our esteemed panelists will give an insightful and informative analysis of the current e-commerce scenario in India. The conference will touch and reflect upon various aspects of digital commerce and examine the numerous opportunities and challenges posed before the industry at large. The conference will also shed light on the upcoming areas like mobile commerce and examine the ways to boost it to a level that proves profitable proposition.

The event has a fairly impressive list of speakers.

Registration costs Rs 5000 + taxes

Check the link or details http://iamai.in/events/3rd_digital_commerce_conference/speakers.htm

Here some of the excerpts of the media coverage we received for IAMAI’s 3rd Financial Inclusion and Digital Payments Conference:

Indiainfoline

IAMAI has extended their complete support to the government to create a favorable environment to drive financial inclusion. and said that its members will work out business models that are conducive to push digital payments’ growth. This was stated by senior economists, experts and industry captains at the 3rd Financial Inclusion & Digital Payment Conference. More…

Watblog.com

Digital payment solutions will most definitely be popular once there is awareness between the consumers, and if there is a clear understanding between the regulators and the institutions. Such conferences will hopefully help in both the situations, more importantly the latter because unless the regulators and the institutions have a clear cut understanding, it doesn’t make much sense to spread the word to the customers. More…

International Business Times:

Identifying digital payments as the way forward to push economic growth, the conference provided a platform to discuss and deliberate the best plausible approach required to model a system to drive digital payments and financial inclusion. More…

India microfinance News

Speaking at the event organised by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) in association with ItzCash Card, eminent Economist, Shri SS Tarapore cautioned that strong regulatory pressure to deliver on financial inclusioncan end up in a number game and added that financial inclusion should be led by an understanding of the needs of the customers rather than achieving targets. Calling for a pragmatic way to achieve financial inclusion, Shri Tarapore said, “The ideal approach to delivery of financial services on mobile phones would be to create joint ventures between banks and telecom companies with limited banking licences.” More…

MicrofinanceFocus

The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) in association with Itz Cash recently conducted the 3rd Financial Inclusion and Digital Payments Conference titled “Cash to Cashless Society” in Mumbai. More…

moneylife.in

On the occasion of the 3rd Financial Inclusion & Digital Payments Conference organised by the IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India), industry experts spoke about the hurdles in the process of financial inclusion and whether solutions like prepaid cards and mobile money can be effectively harnessed to aid in the efforts.More…

ibtimes.com

Speaking at the conference, KG Karmakar, Managing Director, NABARD, said security and right-sizing of technological issues concerning financial inclusions have to be handled with the same zeal. “A common, accessible and easy platform in rural areas has to be formulated to bring about financial inclusion. Digital payments are the best way available to us presently to do this, provided concerns like security are addressed.” More…

Coming up next: International Conference on Online Clasifieds…

Date: 14th July 2010

Venue: New Delhi (exact venue to be announced soon)

Standby for more details.

For sponsorship inquiries, reach us at

Internet & Mobile Association of India
406, Ready Money Terrace,167, Dr Annie Besant Road,Mumbai – 400 018 Tel : +91-22-24954574 Fax :+91-22-24935945
Email :gaurav@iamai.in

http://www.iamai.in/Maincontactus.aspx

Krishna Kumar from Inmobi.com gave an interesting talk filled with useful insights.

Priceless quote from the talk: Privacy and security are like mother-in-laws. Over-hyped and they don’t bite

Some key points from the talk:

1. Value Proposition for social networking or mobile or anywhere else is value – what is the value that we are providing. It is not about 2G, 3G, LG, it is the value that we are delivering to the customer.
2. The whole value of “value” is also difficult. Somethings can be quantified, somethings can not. For instance, you can not quantify the value of the conversation/ call.
3. If you are Facebook, you have more data of the user than the ISP which provides Internet to you to access Facebook. So, if you can get users engaged and sharing, you will get data.
4. Location is definitely an important concept these days. In future, chipsets prices will continue to fall and handset itself will give you the location of a person.
5. Hence, if you can combine social profile with the location information, this becomes a deadly combination like fuel combined with fire.
6. We also need to look beyond the operators. In India, 80-90% of data goes “off” operators. Hence, an enormous opportunity exists to tap them. Some networks in Indonesia and Turkey have been able to get this data – not only from social profile perspective but also usage profile as well.
7. When we combine social profile with location, we get a deadly combination. When we add usage profile to it, then it is unbeatable.

Also check: inmobi blog

Excerpts from the talkby Satya Yerramsetti, CEO, 160by2

You build up a network which you don’t use [you just accepted the invites] is useless. However, you have 300 contacts on your phone book and 30-40 people are ones you are in regular touch with. That is social networking at its best.

Hence, as a first step to analyze mobile social networks, you must first understand how social networks work, how the users behave online and then try and use creative implementations based on this understanding. We also need to understand that users are also very dicey and picky about how companies use their data. This is separate from privacy – which obviously is an issue and we need to tackle the same. Another interesting thing in the current scenario is location. Every person in future will have a phone with GPS enabled which makes location specific networking and engagement the next obvious statement. Knowing a person’s location can lead to better and more engaging interaction with the consumer.

160by2.com is Gold sponsor for IAMAI Mobile Ad Conference.

Find Satya on Facebook * Twitter*160by2 Blog

Sujai Srivastava, Business Head – VAS Marketing and Mobile Advertising, Reliance Communication, well known as Sujai basically talked about these two topics:

1. What we ought to be doing and what are we currently doing?
2. What is creativity in the mobile space?

Sujai said that they have lot of data. For instance, they have all this data:

• Targeting -
  • Prepaid/ postpaid, Bill value/ recharge value, HSD/ Net connect, Roaming Customers, International callers/ receivers
• Demographics -
  • Circle, pincode, gender, name, birthdays
• VAS Usage -
  • Content/ data users/ event subscrubers

The various advertising opportunities include -> Banner/ Brand zone/ Rich call alert/ Aad videos/ SMS 2.0/ Big Map. Scheduling takes care of when to show what advertisement. Sujai said that RCom is now trying to add the filtering capability – for instance, should we talk about upsell to this user or not.

Sujai then went on to cite some examples of successful campaigns include Union Bank of India – focusing on branding and lead generation, Colgate World of Care, Club Mahindra and other FMCG brands. He feels that if you crack the FMCG brand, others follow easily.

The future includes Mobile TV [Live Streaming of Cricket Match].

The second panel discussion at IAMAI Mobile Ad Conference “Mobile Advertising : The next Big Thing – Capabilities and Challenges” is now under way. Interesting question floated by the moderator [Shailesh Rao, MD, Google India] on where do panelists see mobile advertising going in the next 03 years? The comments are as below:
Raj Singh, MD-India, 2ergo Group : Couple of things are moving rapidly now. Mobile has a very large reach now. Brands now have a stake in the growth and utilization of this medium.

Pradeep Shrivastava, CMO, Idea Cellular : Currently, mobile advertising comprises of SMS blasts and banners. Permission based marketing almost does not exist right now. We have almost a very crude form of advertising right now. In next 03 years, unique engagement models will appear. For instance, people who use roaming a lot, could also use travel related services. The ecosystem will evolve a lot – mostly, comprising of local brand sign up. We will also see a move towards Pin Point Targeting.

Sanjay Singh, CMO, One97 : Currently, ringtones and other mobile downloads as an industry are more than music industry otherwise. We will see more such trends appear. Google presented advertising as a value add-on for consumers when the norm were pop-up banners. Similarly, we will see/ need strategies that are unique for mobile advertising.

A R Vishwanath, Chairman/ CEO, IMI Mobile : The key leap for mobile industry right now needs to be contextualizaton. Content that you serve needs to be customized from a users personality and behavior.

Shailesh Rao, MD, Google India : Mobile advertising agencies and advertisers need to experiment and be willing to risk at least in the short term.

Voice – There is question about how many people will opt in for Voice? Voice brings its own challenges as well. Voice should be in language of the consumer – Gujerati in Gujarat and Tamil in Tamil Nadu.

Measurement – Maybe, we do not need measurement after all.

Operator – The same person who downloads porn in night also downloads devotional songs in the morning.

Vinish Kathuria, COO, Spice Digital - We started with Cost per Lead and now with data coming in [we tracked all data when we experimented], the clients have signed up for long term contracts. Hence, don’t loose hope. There are two areas – rural areas and urban areas. Today, rural areas might not be attractive to brands but it is attractive for Public Private Partnerships as well as Government of India.

Shantanu Sirohi, VP and Founder, Interactive Avenue – I have a huge issue with Operator Portals. Most Operator Portals are running WAP Porn websites.

Mahesh Narayan, Country Manager, Adlab - Democracy will prevail after a while. Most consumers will go to what gives them value – it could be operator portals or other niche portals run by specialist companies.

The next IAMAI event is scheduled to take place in India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, on 7th April 2010.

Venue: The Hyatt Regancy, Sahar Airport Road, Mumbai

Brief Agenda:
* PANEL DISCUSSION 1: How Can the Mobile and advertising industries work to deliver ROI?
* PANEL DISCUSSION 2: Mobile advertising: the next big thing – capabilities and challenges.
* PANEL DISCUSSION 3: Over coming the challenges of delivering successful creative mobile campaigns.
* PANEL DISCUSSION 4: Driving Mobile advertising revenue at the intersection of mobile social networking and location.

Some of the confirmed speakers:
ATUL MADAN, VP- Mobile Advertising, Comviva
SANJAY TRIPATHY, Executive Vice President & Head – Marketing, HDFC Standard Life Insurance
VIJAY SHEKHAR SHARMA, Managing Director, One97 Communications

Register online here
Just 3 weeks to go. Hurry and register now. We’ll see you there in Mumbai