[YS Meetup] App monetization through carrier billing, how Newshunt and PK Online are making it possible

The total PCs shipment in 2014 was around 314 million units which includes desk-based and notebook, which declined by 1.13% compared to 2013. The total mobile and tablet shipment in 2014 was around 2.4 billion and has increased by 3.32% as compared to 2013 (Source: Gartner).

The unprecedented growth of smartphone and tablet adoption and consistent decline in desktop/pc sales shows that the way forward to engage with the end consumers will be with the APP approach.

In the PC era, we began with simple individual applications for word processing, image editing and system monitoring, etc and then came the era of software suites which were a bunch of applications bundled together. Enter the smartphone and tablet era, and we are back to individual applications more commonly known as ‘apps’ which have a very focused objective. It has to be light, robust, super fast, and efficient and has to provide very good user experience – the scope of error and time to adapt to user requirements has drastically reduced for developers in the mobile and tablet era.

To add to this challenge, app monetization has become a big concern for most developers. Barring a few top developers there are hardly any who are generating good revenues from theirs app. Apart from paid apps, the top app monetization strategies have been -- Freemium model, In-App Purchase, In-App Advertising and off late Incentivized advertising.

Given that less than two percent of Indians have access to credit cards, it makes it even more difficult for Indian app developers to monetize using one of the above models. With Apple and Google taking the lion’s share of the revenues emerging from app monetization many telcos around the world have been eyeing to get a share in the pie given that they already are the last mile connect with app users unless they are on wi-fi. In India, Airtel, Vodafone and Idea are already looking at building technology platforms in conjunction with their existing carrier systems to enable more app distribution, usage and monetization.

In this context we are happy to share success stories on how some emerging Indian businesses like Newshunt and PK Online have been able to leverage these APIs exposed by telcos in empowering their users to transact online (through mobile) without having the need to own a credit card through carrier billing.

This Saturday come listen to the Newshunt and PK Online story on how they successfully implement their billing solution in their app through Vodafone’s carrier billing API.

When – Saturday 21st February 2015 | 10AM – 12 noon

Where – YourStory office, Indiranagar, Bangalore

Please register here .

Agenda

10:00 – 10:30AM : Registration over networking

10:30 – 10:40AM : Quick Introduction & Briefing

10:40 – 11:00AM : Newshunt Story - News & E-commerce Monetization

11:00 – 11:20AM : PK Online Story – Content & Video Monetization

11:20 – 11:45AM : Hands on “How To” on working with telco APIs with Vodafone

11:45 – 12:00PM : Q&A

For any queries, please write to [email protected]