Sedania Innovator in airtime-sharing pact with U Mobile

• Allows prepaid users to transfer credits to others, anytime and anywhere
• U Mobile has heavy data consumers, 3GB per person vs 2.6GB of other telcos

MOBILE services enabler Sedania Innovator Bhd and U Mobile Sdn Bhd have signed an agreement that would allow U Mobile prepaid subscribers to transfer to and request mobile credits from other users.
 
Under the agreement, Sedania Innovator will provide Airtime Sharing (ATS) services via its proprietary platform.
 
With similar agreements already signed with Celcom Axiata Bhd, Maxis Bhd and Tune Talk Sdn Bhd in Malaysia, as well as Robi Axiata Ltd in Bangladesh, this brings Sedania Innovator’s “addressable market” to 58 million subscribers, according to its executive director Firoz Mohd Noor.
 
He however declined to say what its addressable market was before the deal with U Mobile.
 
“The increased addressable market of approximately 58 million [subscribers] augurs well for our financial performance in 2016, and onwards.
 
“We are optimistic that this collaboration with a fast-growing brand will propel the velocity of Sedania Innovator’s overall transaction volume and induce a behaviour of sharing amongst peers,” he said at the signing ceremony between Sedania Innovator and U Mobile in Kuala Lumpur on Feb 3.
 
Firoz said that as of its third quarter of 2015, Sedania Innovator’s daily transaction volume in Malaysia for its ATS platform was in the 250,000 to 270,000 range.
 
The deal allows U Mobile prepaid subscribers to transfer and request mobile credits from other users via short messaging service (SMS), USSD Menu Browser (UMB), and also Sedania Innovator’s ‘ShareShare’ mobile app that is available for both Android and iOS.
 
Sedania Innovator chief executive officer Kamshul Kasim said the ShareShare mobile app, which was launched last December, has already recorded about 10,000 downloads so far.
 
Data-focused customer base

 
According to U Mobile chief marketing officer Jasmine Lee (pic above), its prepaid users will be able to use the service from early in the second half of 2016.
 
Pricing for the ATS service has to be determined as U Mobile is still “studying the price level” that should be offered to consumers, she added.
 
“U Mobile is always looking to add value and enhance our customer’s experience, and mobile credit transfer is fast becoming the preferred method for prepaid users to send mobile credits to their family and friends.
 
“Our customers can look forward to sending and requesting mobile credits in a fast, safe and convenient way wherever they are, and whenever they want,” she said.
 
According to Lee, U Mobile has about four million subscribers in Malaysia, 90% of them prepaid users.
 
“The smartphone penetration of our user base is 77%, so in terms of smartphone ownership, ours is higher than the other three major telcos,” she declared.
 
She also claimed that U Mobile was the “fastest-growing” telco operator in 2015 in terms of customer base and data usage.
 
Declining to disclose the growth rates for either metric, she said U Mobile has a “very strong base of data users.”
 
“On average, the other three telcos’ data consumption is at 2.6GB per user, but with U Mobile, the data consumption is close to 3GB for each user,” she said.
 
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