China's
biggest internet company Tencent is betting big on India with its
mobile instant messaging service - WeChat - expecting to tap into the
growing smartphone user base here, said a company executive. This comes
at a time when some of the most successful Chinese internet firms,
including e-commerce giant Alibaba and search engine biggie Baidu, are
looking to move beyond their home market.
WeChat,
which claims to have 300 million users globally, will also look to
offer mobile games and monetize the platform through brand associations
with merchants going forward, Dennis Hau, GM, international business
group at Tencent, told TOI. The Hong Kong-listed company's flagship QQ
messenger has 700 million users.
Over the past
few years, telecom companies have lost out heavily on SMS revenue as
more people have moved to instant messaging over their mobile phones.
WeChat will compete with the likes of popular mobile app Whatsapp and
BlackBerry's instant messaging service BBM. Other players in the market
are Nimbuzz, which claims to have 150 million users while the recently
launched Bharti Softbank's app Hike crossed 5 million users globally.
South
African media group Naspers-backed Tencent said the company has struck
partnerships with Cafe Coffee Day, Big Bazaar, Goibibo, Yahoo Cricket,
Tradus and Santa Banta, but a monetization model was still not in place.
"We will first look to get as many users as possible and then move on
to getting commercial alliances in place," he said. Launched last year
in August in India, WeChat globally does not charge subscribers for
usage, worrying many mobile carriers.
Hau told
TOI WeChat will be open to tying up with operators for bundled services
going forward. "We are open to partnerships just like we have done in
other markets. We will look to differentiate our product with features
such as location based services and live video chat," he said.
WeChat,
which started tapping the international market last year, is now
available in 49 countries and counts Indonesia and Malaysia as its top
markets.
Many telecom operators are now tying
up with free instant messaging app services to shore up their data
usage. Last year, Anil Ambani's Reliance Communications (RCom) announced
an exclusive partnership with Whatsapp while Aircel said it was
partnering with Nimbuzz; Facebook tied up with Airtel and RCom for its
messenger app. Analysts tracking the telecom sector said SMSs which
contribute about 5-6% to the overall revenue of operators will be hit
severely with data consumption seeing an uptick. This has been the trend
worldwide where mobile operators have lost out on text revenues with
the penetration of mobile internet.