As a part of its plan to move beyond voice services, Vodafone is focusing on data and m-commerce. Services including loan repayments and money transfer through the mobile platform would see the light of the day during later part of this year, senior company official said.

“All our initiatives are meant to take us beyond voice. Even when Vittorio (Vittorio Colao, CEO of the Vodafone group) came down to India recently, he had disclosed that data and m-commerce would be our focus areas for growth. The key drivers are the facts that we have vast experience on both in other parts of the world. For example, in Africa, where a majority of the population does not have access to banking services, our M-Pesa service is a big success. India has similar demographics. We hope to replicate our success here as well,” said Suresh Kumar R, COO for Vodafone in Tamil Nadu.

M-Pesa is a branchless banking service, designed to enable users to do basic banking transactions without the need to visit a bank branch. Users, with basic phones having SMS facility, will be able to use these services such as remitting money and making loan repayments. There is a large migrant labour population in India across states. These workers have very few means to send money to their homes. The mobile payment service will help them to send money without hassles. Vodafone, at present, is running pilot projects in different states of India for similar services.

“Apart from these, we will also have ‘nice to have’ services for other segments of the society. For example, your mobile phone could replace your credit card at a retail store. You can pay using your mobile balance. Over the next two to three years, most of these initiatives will become realities,” he added.

Samaresh Parida, strategy director of Vodafone, told Financial Chronicle in a recent interview, “We are trying to become an end-to-end communication services company providing offerings including voice, internet, office networking and fixed-line telephone connections. Though we have started to offer these services, it will be a while before we start seeing substantial revenues. Over the next four years, we target about three times more revenue from the services. We would want the segment to contribute between 14 per cent and 16 per cent to our revenue.”

shyamalaseetharaman@mydigitalfc.com