My long standing driver – Yadav aka ‘Maharaj’ is a rather decent bloke. He is demure, soft spoken and usually never has an opinion. All he loves to do is drive and polish the car. Yet, when I call him on his mobile phone (provided by me) for logistical coordination and other errands, the caller tune he forces me to hear makes me go insane. He has chosen the choicest of bawdy, vulgar and obscene bollywood songs available as his caller ring back tunes. If Hugh Hefner called Maharaj, he would probably never kiss a Playboy bunny again. Maharaj has taken mobile embarrassment to a nuclear level.
Hearing is believing!
The least gratifying part of this story is that I pay his mobile bills and hence I am actually funding this spectacular entertainment strategy of his.
So what makes me do something so stupid?
Well, I have no option. This is the Indian Mobile Mafia at play that adds all kinds of value added services to their subscribers’ phones without their permission.
Maharaj has been subscribed to a monthly CRBT (caller ring back tune) service without anyone asking him or me. If you try and call the ‘big’ telecom operator that powers his phone and request to get that service switched off, the pain and the trauma of being passed around amongst villager sounding operators and then pleading them to just get that damn service switched off is just too much of a pain. It’s better to hear those amazing songs. And if I ask Maharaj to pay for his own bill, he will just hang up – he only receives my calls!
Allow me to explain the real math behind the biggest organized crime racket in this country:
India has 50 crore mobile users (500 million) and their ARPU (average revenue per user) each month is plummeting. Thanks to all out wars between so many operators, voice as a stand alone business will be a very competitive space to make money. SMS at one time was a couple of bucks – now it’s been reduced to almost nothing.
So, if you are an operator and have massive investments to recoup, what do you do?
Enter ‘VAS’ – or value added services. Ringtones, Wallpapers, Games, blah blah. Sure they seem exciting, but it’s a relatively small % of people who are really interested. And after the newness wears off, you really don’t care. The bulk of India is oblivious to such services since they only want to speak and make calls. Also, the remaining subscribers being added are coming from rural areas (all urban areas in India now have almost 100% mobile penetration) and these folks don’t want VAS at all.
So the next best thing is to thrust it on them!
In a mobile bill, very few consumers keep checking every small item and then calling up their operator to cancel, change schemes, etc. Mr. Maharaj’s Orchestra costs me Rs 30 (0.60 cents) a month – and I don’t have the time and effort to bother and get a ear pain calling up his service provider. It’s also amazing how many times his service provider calls him (while he is driving) to plead with him to say yes for song downloads and other useless services. Forget the embarrassing songs; these guys will cost us a car accident!
Multiply Rs 30 (0.60 cents) with 10 crore (100 million) users (20% rotating guinea pigs) and you have 300 crores (60 million US$) a month in a scam that is just too painful for consumers to switch off.
This is not just an India scam. While in China when we were operating Mobile2win (subsequently acquired by Walt Disney), we were always tempted to send mass sms messages to Chinese consumers to lure them into subscribing to Astrology and Love services. If the innocent consumer would message back, they would automatically be subscribed to 6 months of such services with very difficult ‘unwinding’ procedures. I remember a vendor showing us a machine that would be fitted with 24 sims just as a spamming device to lure subscribers.
I understand that TRAI in India (The Telecom Regulator) is really taking the operators to task and getting them to clean up their act.
Till their bullets hit Mr. Maharaj’s operator, I will merrily listen to his songs… and who knows… even hum them when I am drunk?
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Originally posted on May 19, 2011 on rodinhood.com
asha chaudhry
“mr maharaj’s orchestra” stayed with me the first time i read this. and 14 months after – when i actually met mr maharaj for the first time, the first thing that popped up in my mind was “wonder what his caller tune is like nowadays?” !!!
an amazing read. you’ve got across a very valid pain in the butt msg in the most interesting (and memorable) way ever.
p.s: i still recall this post when i see yadav!