Mobile Internet may be perceived as a limited revenue generating avenue in India as of now. But July Systems which recently bagged exclusive rights to develop and monetize a mobile internet service for the upcoming IPL is banking big on the opportunity offered by the medium and is confident of triggering a exponential rise in mobile net usage.

The firm which specializes in offering mobile internet publishing and monetization platforms for sports media houses and has clients such as NASCAR, PGA Tour, CBS Sports and NBC Sports as its global business partners and media publications including NDTV, TV18 and Mint for the Indian market says its extensive internal research pinpointed three aspects hampering the growth of mobile internet in India.

Firstly the content offered presently limits the end-user experience as well as addressable market since the services are not supported by all the devices. “We have designed the delivery of services in such a way that it will support all GPRS capable devices and at the same promising an enhanced richer end-user experience based on the capability of the device,” explains the company’s Co-Founder and CEO, Rajesh Reddy while speaking to TelecomTiger. Reddy was earlier associated with UniMobile which came up with the world’s first internet to mobile messaging service way back in 1996.UniMobile was subsequently acquired by Verisign.

Secondly the awareness level within the consumer community over how to type URLs to access mobile internet was found to be very low, says Reddy. To address this, July Systems has come up with its patented solution which enables users to make a toll-free call on a phone number appearing on TV screens following which an SMS will be sent to the user providing the link to the desired URL. This would also help mobile service providers to register increased activation of mobile data access from users who are not internet/GPRS savvy.

Thirdly, Reddy says that it has packaged its offerings in such a way that the services will cater to the mass market by making most of the content free to the users and monetized by mobile advertising July is pioneering a unique ‘immersive and session-based advertising’ model whereby campaigns of only a particular advertiser will be displayed on user’s terminal for the entire session. The campaigns will be displayed in multiple rich media formats including video, interstitial and expandable banner tied together seamlessly.

July Systems is offering the service on a “freemium” model – i.e. as primarily free with certain sections being paid. The content offered under the free version like video highlights, news, info etc will be supported by advertising to generate revenues. The paid services will comprise of real-time ball-by-ball video services. When asked why this service is not included under the free version Reddy reasons, “There will always be a subset of users who are willing to pay for a premium experience. The global digital media industry is moving towards freemium. This is the business model of the future.”

The CEO says that it is in talks with some of India’s leading advertisers and many of them have committed to explore mobile web medium for their advertising objectives.

“IPL is just the beginning. It will trigger the mobile web adoption in India. We intend to follow-up this with a range of premium channels from our media partners and keep up the momentum,” adds Reddy.