Spice Digital, an Indian company which provides mobile value added services, is going to offer utility bill payment services through its recently unveiled mobile portal Spice Gang.
Spice Gang allows users to selectively subscribe to and discover various infotainment and entertainment services. The bouquet of services ranges from jokes, greeting cards, news, songs cricket scores and much more. Premium content is also available from Coke Studio, Hungama.
Spice Digital is looking at a payment gateway to the WAP site, which will allow users to not only purchase applications and services from this site, but also pay utility bills and make other transactions.
Spice Gang has applications for most of the smartphone operating systems. This application has a better look and feel. It has a smoother user interface compared to the web version.
Users can currently also listen to FM, songs and other voice services through interactive voice response. Services are available through almost all service providers in the country.
Railway related information like PNR status and seats is also available. However, you cannot buy tickets right now. Soon the WAP site will allow users to pay utility bills like electricity, phone and mobile bills through the portal, a spokesperson of Spice Digital confirmed to The Mobile Indian.
Spice Gang is currently notching 20 million page views per month and around 15,000 users join the gang every day. Spice Gang content downloads stand at 1 million per month.
Commenting on this, Saket Agarwal, global chief operating officer, services, Spice Digital said, “With the mobile internet ramping up faster than the desktop internet we at Spice believe in the futuristic capabilities of the ecosystem which is the reflection of our mobile internet strategy. Spice Gang is a stepping stone in that direction providing insights and opening the window of opportunities.”
Spice Digital has been working on applications for most handset vendors including RIM and Nokia. Through its subsidiary Spice Labs, the company has counted over 30 million application downloads across the globe.
Spice has further enhanced its capabilities in the mobile internet space by its acquisitions in Malaysia (BeoWorld) and Indonesia (MMS), and it is very well placed for path breaking mobile internet services with its strategic tie-up with the world’s biggest Chipset company MediaTek of Taiwan.
Looking at the reception in the Indian market, plans are underway to launch the portal for South Asian markets.
Features such as mobile banking, bill junction and other payment options will be made available shortly and will enable the developer community to monetize its applications and widgets on the portal.