Mahindra Comviva evolves the mobile music ecosystem in Africa

6 May 2013

Mahindra Comviva, the global company that provides mobile solutions beyond VAS, is rapidly expanding its mobile music offerings in Africa.

Over the last 12 months, the company is reported to have become one of the largest music aggregators in the African continent, having collaborated with over 70 partners including local and international content providers/copyright bodies/local artists and production houses in the region.

Currently, Mahindra Comviva owns music rights for 35,000 music assets spanning multiple popular genres including Hip Hop, Pop, Inspirational, Rumba, Hip Life, Football Chants, Gospel, Jazz, Rock, Reggae and Retro in over 30 different languages. Operators in Africa have seen more than fourfold increase in their music services penetration and subscriber base, multi fold increase in their music revenues, using Mahindra Comviva's digital services.

Mahindra Comviva manages an operator's complete music and infotainment services portfolio, bringing together content technology platform, discovery, analytics and recommendation tools, storefront management and business and marketing expertise to drive growth and usage.

Matching music and content to customer preferences

Recently the company launched its music and content recommendation engine, which enables operators to maximize VAS sales by matching music and content to customer preferences in real-time. The ability to cater to an audience has helped operators record a 50% growth in sales.

Commenting on its managed music services success in the continent, Atul Madan, head of Digital Services at Mahindra Comviva said "We are committed to bringing world class digital services that enrich the lives of people across markets. We have focused on expanding the operator's digital music and infotainment ecosystem by bringing local content application and partners in addition to recognised international labels. With our proven expertise in deploying and managing music services for operators, Mahindra Comviva is committed towards operator's revenue growth."

To help operators retain a dominant position in the marketplace and counter the threat from over the top players, Mahindra Comviva has also added innovative offerings to its popular infotainment suite "Hi Life" and "MyTV", adding a wide range of digital apps - TV channels, news, health, recipes, astrology, delivered over multiple channels - video, voice and text, to subscribers over multiple channels including OBD, IVR, USSD, SMS, Star to Copy, Facebook, Customer Care and Web.

Customers can also download the transcript whilst viewing a video of their favorite recipe. Likewise, customers can buy their favorite music as a downloadable video or a ring back tone from the same storefront.

Leading operator groups in Africa have outsourced management of their music services portfolio to Mahindra Comviva. On an average, music services in Africa contribute 40% to operators' downloadable content revenues. To cater to fast evolving trends and sustain consumer engagement, the company is constantly introducing service features like karaoke, user generated music content and social RBT.