India mobile content boom

We posted the other day on the fact that we think that business media and information companies should be looking more at mobile than broadband opportunities in India. We were interested, then, in this post from contentsutra.com about a new Rs500 million (US$11 million) incubator fund from Cellebrum (and Lehman Bros.) to boost entrepreneurial mobile content activity.

The post draws on an Economic Times article which quotes the President of Cellebrum's parent company, Mcorp Global, Dilip Modi. He says that the incubator fund represents 50% of the company's development plan. The article notes:

The company also plans to extend its VAS services to data and enterprise customers. The Delhi-based company is talking to corporate houses in sectors like insurance and manufacturing for a possible tie-up. The tie-up would mobile-enable the client’s back-end database. For instance, an insurance company instead of making promotional calls to their customers will be able to send SMS alerts for the same using Cellebrum’s services.

I fear that concept of mobile-enabling a back-end database might give rise to a variety of vulgar jokes but will leave that thought for your weekend contemplation.