Airtel to include location awareness in all it’s VAS offerings

Airtel plans to take LBS to the next level by incorporating location awareness in all it’s VAS offerings. Rakesh Mahajan, VP Marketing Business Head, VAS and Incubation Mobile Services, said on the sidelines of FICCI round table on LBS.
He also said that the company is looking for innovative ideas to launch VAS services. According to him prime requirements for new VAS services are simplicity, usablity and fun.
The FICCI roundtable on LBS was organised to discuss the oppertunities and challenges in offering Location based services.
Rakesh Mahajan said that location awareness is very important for every VAS service and that LBS can be offered as standalone service or can be clubbed with other services without being marketed as such.
Rakesh Trivedi, General Manager of TTSL said “LBS has several business cases and is a gold mine waiting to be tapped. We are currently looking at offering business to business services. These include tracking services and asset management services”.
He added that business to customer service is another big area for TTSL where we are working to provide very innovative and usable services.
Rohan Verma, Director MapmyIndia said “the lack of LBS take off is more due to supply side constraint rather than demand side”. He added that the service providers needs to show more intent to tap LBS opportunity.
Yogesh Bijlani, Country head, India and GM, Telenity said that they are in talks with Idea cellular and BSNL to launch friend finder type applications, which enables people to stay connected to friends and family with information on their current location.
He said that BSNL is working on a bouquet of services with Telenity, which it plans to launch shortly.