But only for a short while.
Just read this piece of news on contentsutra that mauj had a 10 million round from westbridge, sequoia & intel capital ! I don’t think it’s a news to celebreate.
Because the business of mauj(ringtone) has already reached its peak if not started its decline. Also the business model of mauj is not in tune with the way the dynamics of this industry is shaping up. Their model is is attuned to the walled garden approach of the telecom industry. They are signing up big actors and studios to run their businesses which is their core competence now and source of competitive advantage no doubt but this very thing will be lethal to them leading them into a competence trap.
The walls of the telco garden are being teared down which means a huuuuge structural change of the Industry.It is happening elsewhere in the world and it is just a matter of time that this starts happening in India. Remember Friedman who told us last year that the world is so flat that you release a marble in Europe/US and it will roll down to bangalore.
Shawn Cohnan has made his bets in spaces leveraging these structural changes and puts these perspective very nicely in one of his posts. Btw did I ever mention that cohnan is very very sharp.(He used to run a ringtone business once and now focusses his attention elsewhere – user generated content)
mtrajan.com 