by Satrajit Sen

Banyan Netfaqs, the publisher of Afaqs.com and Afaqs Reporter, has relaunched its telecom industry news portal TelecomYatra.com as TheMobileIndian.com. TelecomYatra was launched in November 2009 as a B2B (business-to-business) website to provide latest developments on voice, VAS (value added services), technology and allied sectors. But, now the website has been reoriented towards a B2C (business-to-consumer) future.

Speaking about the purpose of this rebranding, Sreekant Khandekar, director, Banyan Netfaqs, told AlooTechie, “We have been covering the mobile business for about a year since we launched TelecomYatra as a B2B site. Always an exciting business, we realised that mobile telephony is going to be transformed in the next couple of years for three reasons -- One, the much anticipated launch of 3G services which will finally allow consumers to do a whole host of things on their mobile phones. But 3G by itself means nothing unless handsets that can take advantage of it are affordable. Micromax and others have ensured that 3G’s adoption will be faster than it has been in wealthier countries. Another factor is the rise of Android – and therefore mobile applications at the very moment when the first two developments are taking place.”

“Suddenly, Indians have got the bandwidth, the devices and the content (through apps) which will change the way they use the phone. When we looked at the landscape ahead, we realised that the real excitement in mobile telephony was no longer in things like regulation and operations but on the consumer front and somehow we – and other B2B sites – were not being able to fully capture it. So, we had two options: One, continue as a B2B site but run a higher percentage of consumer facing stories (a ploy some sites/blogs are using) – because even people in the business seemed interested in those. And two, reorient TelecomYatra towards a clear B2C future. We decided to take the latter course. And I am glad that we did because this looks like a truly scalable opportunity,” Khandekar said.

Giving out an example of how things are changing Sreekant Khandekar further said that according to Opera Mini mobile web browser, the number of unique users in India on the mobile web has grown by almost 300 per cent over the past 12 months. “Even on a small base, that is an explosion of a new medium. We have got a whole lot of things planned out and people will see ‘TheMobileIndian’ changing almost every month over the next six months,” he added.