Reliance Communications (RCom) is set to vary the staple diet of ‘ABCD’ (Astrology, Bollywood, Cricket and Dating) fed to the Indian mobile consumer. “We want to graduate to the ‘E’ for education,” says Krishna Durbha, business and marketing head of VAS at RCom’s Applications, Content and Solutions group.

Four years ago, RCom pioneered SMS-based exam results service from 100 state educational boards, which continue to yield a windfall of millions of messages every exam season. Now it wants to go further to fuel the voracious appetite of India’s aspiring middle class youth for career-oriented education. “We are extending the service before, during and after the exam results,” says Durbha.

RCom says it will operate live call centres over its voice portal that can provide information in local languages on college admissions, career options and cut-off dates for admission to educational institutions.

Complementing the m-education initiative is a massive rural reachout programme planned from the second quarter of 2008 to educate rural population about getting the most out of their mobiles.

Durbha finds rural subscribers are remarkably sophisticated and unexpected. One of its wap-based R-World’s advertisers, Fair and Lovely, found a large number of the 40,000 click-through applicants for its scholarship came from rural women. However, there is less than expected take-up for Talking Message, a voice mail-based mobile service seemingly optimised for the rural user not adept at text messaging.  Awareness and facility of use are some of the barriers. As is the reluctance of GSM networks to offer interoperability to the upstart CDMA operator.

Recently, Reliance began trotting out nukkad nataks (neighborhood theatre) performed by travelling troupes from the back of vans featuring popular characters like Munnabhai who endorse the brand. These promotions were geared to picking up subscription in areas of low penetration such as northeast India.

Now, RCom is partnering with a US telecom vendor to reach into the hinterlands with interactive kiosks and a fleet of jeeps to promote rural features and applications. Some 500 villages, at the rate of 20 villages per state, and several areas en route are due to be treated to itinerant entertainment that promotes device literacy, including single button information services and mobile voice mail.

As the in-your-face challenger to the GSM brotherhood, RCom is credited with triggering the tariff breakthrough that precipitated mobile towards a mass service in mid- 2003. It also was first to market with ‘aam admi’ and rural VAS applications such as bus route information.

The rural market is the next frontier for cellular expansion as urban penetration rates reach 50% and the government relaxes the rules for USO funding to cover mobile infrastructure in small towns. With TRAI citing 1:50 rates for rural penetration, bottom of the pyramid marketing has now turned to the underserved brethren in towns of less than a lakh population.

“We have to keep our finger on the pulse of consumer demand, whatever is easiest to consume,” says Durbha. Nevertheless, he believes that not unlike SMS a few years ago, music tones and calller ring back tunes, currently regarded as VAS products, will eventually be graded as basic services, yielding to more meaningful content catering to specific segments, such as mobile remittances, commodity prices and loan information for tractors. “Its all a matter of evangelism,” says Durbha.

RCom also has its hopes pinned on regional SMS, be it in Marathi or Hindi, which has a more widespread benefit in that it engages developers from semi-urban or rural towns.