Govt Should Invest More In Digital Infrastructure

In this age where everybody is striving to be socially connected, we cannot but praise the facilities that are being brought in by various communication providers who provide affordable and good quality communication channel to their end users. VIVA Communications is one such emerging provider of converged communication solutions serving voice, video and next-generation communication needs of enterprises, particularly SMEs, and consumers in the IP space. Srinivasan S., the founder-director of VIVA Communications, spoke to EFY Bureau on what motivated him to enter this arena, his growth plans and the future prospects of IP communications in India. We got him on his VoIP line from the UK.

Q: What triggered your interest in IP communications? Also, what was the main motivating factor behind setting up of VIVA Communications?
Srinivasan: We used to be a distributor for a major network in the UK. During that time we acquired a passion to be a service provider. And since we wanted to serve our customers through a direct channel, we bagged the Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) licence in Australia and set up AUSIM. Much to everyone's surprise, we could ramp up more than thousand customers just within a few months. But factors such as lack of domain expertise and insufficient funding forced us to shut down our MVNO operations in Australia. However, we still wanted to work in the same domain, i.e. telecom service provisioning. And we soon found our interest in VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) which was in early stages those days.

Once we entered the VoIP field, it took us a year and a half to get it right, and soon we realised that voice as a business is not going to stay for that long in the sense we saw growth opportunities in the derivatives of voice such as audio conferencing, global audio bridges, mobile VoIP etc. And now we are here!

Q: How do you differentiate yourself from major players in the Indian market?
Srinivasan: We are targeting small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India to position ourselves in a niche area. This is one domain which lacks in customised solutions from service providers. One of the major advantages of IP communications is that it can be highly customised as per the requirement of an organisation. Rather than providing them with the plain vanilla, we help them achieve their communication targets by customising the solution for them as per their requirement. It helps them not only in cutting down the cost of communication, but also in improving productivity and efficiency.

Q: Could you tell us something about your growth plans in India?
Srinivasan: We are already in the business in South India. We started with Tamil Nadu and implemented one full round of services to businesses, retail customers, educational institutions, health care, etc. Soon we will be spreading our business to different states in the South and then in the next few years to all other states in India. We are focussed about our target segment and business verticals. We want to cater specifically to SMEs and provide them with all three services -- voice, data and video.

Q: How do you think IP communications could help connect rural India? How does VIVA Communications contribute to this trend?
Srinivasan: The easiest and fastest way for connectivity is mobility. After mobiles, the next big thing is IP communications. Compared to the traditional time-division multiplexing (TDM)-based business, which require huge investment, IP can make connectivity cheaper. Now with the WiMAX licences and Wi-Fi networks, the rural market can be brought close to the urban market. We also want government to relax norms for local connectivity on an IP medium. At present, VoIP is allowed to be used only as a separate service and cannot be mixed with TDM or local telephony. Taking cue from the West, India should also relax this norm as it would in turn bring down the cost of telephony.

VIVA is also spreading its wings in rural markets in the country. We have partnered with more than 20 franchisees in Tamil Nadu to put up our own mesh network, broadband connectivity, community-based voice, video, etc. in several areas in the state. We have also started getting into Kerala and Bengaluru. Soon we will be expanding our operations to Andhra Pradesh and other states in South India.

Q: What is the major challenge faced by your company here?
Srinivasan: Even though we have a Category "A" licence (the highest level of ISP licence available in India), we find the size of India, its geography a big challenge. We are devising some new business models to handle this. Another big challenge is the support system required for setting up an IP communication. It is purely a local network dependent business. Hence the biggest challenge is that the network architecture across the organisations across different states is not the same throughout the country and it calls for a proper support system. To ensure this, we are ramping up our operations in a controlled manner rather than an aggressive manner.

Q: What, in your opinion, could government do to help promote IP communications?
Srinivasan: I feel government should start investing more in digital infrastructure. I guess government is doing it, but they should speed up the process. We have seen how other countries have developed much by following this trend. Digital infrastructure can help overcome the shortcomings that we have in our current physical infrastructure.

Government can also think about bringing broadband line to each household in, say, the next five years. If every home and business has the bandwidth, then I think we could find lots of applications that would enable better businesses. The latest advancements in technology such as video conferencing, tele-medicine, etc could also be put to effective use once we have this digital infrastructure in place.

-- Sherin Noordheen