Bangalore: The Mobile Application Conference 2013 held on September 21, 2013 in Bangalore served as a quintessential platform and was packed with mobile enthusiasts. SiliconIndia eloquently thanked all the speakers, sponsors, delegates and all other parties for making this conference a successful one.

This conference had two interesting tracks, one focused on the Mobile Entrepreneurship and the other on the Consumer Business Mobile Applications, 36 Interesting Speakers, over 250 delegates and there was also ample time allocated for networking with like- minded peers.

The conference kick started with the keynote session on Opportunities for Innovation in the Enterprise, Leveraging Mobile Technology by Bharath Lingam, CEO, PurpleTalk. He said enterprises need to look at mobile as an opportunity to create new lines of business, enhance revenue streams, enable seamless one-on-one connect with consumers, improve sales and field force productivity and create a new platform of 360 degree engagement.

The keynote session was then followed by a panel discussion on “Mobile Applications Explode. Who Wins and Who Loses?”, which comprised of the following panel members Edvin Varghese, CEO, Appface Technologies, Jonathan Dsouza, Regional Sales Manager - APAC, Smaato, Ashish Ajmani, Founder & Director, Bitmantra, Ramesh Narasimhan, Entrepreneur - CEO, Hibiscus Technology and Shyamal Mehta, CEO, TechJini Solutions served as a moderator for the same.

According to Edvin, "The Internet of Things" is opening up immense opportunities for startups & entrepreneurs in India. He also highlighted on the mobile app companies that they should focus on solving problems faced by people using the mobile, instead of focusing on apps developed in western countries.

The successive discussion was on “Running Your App Business with a 360 Degree Approach” which comprised of Vivek Rajanna, VP Engineering, Y Media Labs, Ashwin Venkatraman, Director, InMobi, Vinod Cherian Joseph, Principal Engineer, Samsung

and was steered by Bharath Lingam, CEO, PurpleTalk.

While discussing on the subject, Vivek shed light on people who are considering the app development need to focus on the quick iteration and be flexible in approaches and base the solution offering on architecture where one would have maximum control in the direction by adopting open sources and building IP.

Ashwin shed light on three important aspects one is on mobile app business opportunity. First is eventual monetization strategy, second is app discovery and acquiring users and third is about making money from the app.

The conference also had another panel discussion on “Heading towards the Future Mobile World” which comprised of Dr. Viswanath Poosala, Head - Bell Labs India, Alcatel-Lucent, Sagar Babber, Founder & CEO, Snyxius, Shailesh Wankhade, Practice Manager - Enterprise Mobility, Dell and it was driven by Alex Anthony, Head – Alliance, PMO, Marketing , Wipro Mobility Solutions.

While discussing on the above subject Viswanath said “One of the angles on the future mobile world is the minimization of everything: from devices disappearing into watches and glasses, key clicks replaced with one-touch (even zero-touch) inputs, the advent of smaller and smaller cells to support bandwidth explosion. We should expect innovations not just in hardware and network speeds, but also machine learning, multi-modal interfaces, and stronger collaboration between networks and applications."

According to Sagar, “Mobile technology is maturing with innovations such as NFC & LTE which are opening up limitless possibilities on how we interact with the world around us. From opening doors to dispensing coffees & snacks off the vending machines, it could all be securely & conveniently done using smartphones. voice recognitions, hand gestures in 3D space and wearable media will all become our natural extensions immersing individuals completely into the digital space.”

The conference also had another panel discussion on “Opportunities for Entrepreneurs in the Mobile Space” which comprised of the panel members; Dr. Kumar Shiralagi, Managing Director, Kalaari Capital, Bala Parthasarathy, Managing Partner, AngelPrime, Vijaya Kumar Ivaturi, Member, Indian Angel Network. The panel was well moderated by TCM Sundaram, Founder & Managing Director, IDG Ventures India.

According to Bala it’s very easy to build a good app today at a low cost and prove basic traction. Marketing apps is a different story which might need funding. There might be a great "lifestyle business" in selling apps and there is nothing wrong with making a few million dollars. Investors look for a larger business model of which the app is a key component and apps are generally perceived as being easily copyable and hence riskier.

While discussing on the above subject, Vijaya advised that to build a mobile application or solution with a specific sector focus to gain traction and fine tune the business case for scaling. A horizontal solution on the other hand, which is sector agnostic needs a good brand recalls and scale to monetize the solution. Hence, it is better to focus on a specific region to build this in the early stage.

The conference also provided a platform for mobile app development companies to showcase their apps. Entrepreneurs from the participating companies presented their best mobile apps which were then judged by a panel of judges comprising of TCM Sundaram, Founder & Managing Director, IDG Ventures India, Brij Bhushan, VP, Nexus Venture Partners, Vijaya Kumar Ivaturi, Member, Indian Angel Network, Nishant Verman, Associate, Canaan Partners India and Nishant Sameer, Principal - Corporate Technology Office, Samsung.

Amongst the participating companies (Deepbiz, Aceware Technologies, Pasumai Solutions, Neuv.in, Mobinius Technologies and Interactive Thumbz), Deepbiz emerged as the winner of the Best Mobile App Award.

The conference was concluded with an interesting panel discussion on “Fascinating Tips and Tricks: Become Successful Mobile App Entrepreneur”. The panel comprised of Vaideeswaran Sethuraman, Founder & CEO, Divum, Devina Thamman, Managing Partner, Bitmantra with Manish Garg, Co-Founder & COO, Endeavour Technologies being the moderator.

Speakers from three industry verticals shared their views on the “Mobile in Retail: Discovering the Value of Mobile for a Smarter Consumer”.

Firstly, Sonali Kamat, Head - Mobile & Website Engineering, Flipkart.com. According to her "Mobile brings shopping literally to our fingertips. In India, it is especially significant as it lets users in smaller towns and cities access a broader selection of merchandise with a high quality shopping experience. A thoughtful execution strategy should not only focus on providing fast and fluid user experiences but also provide a platform for rapid experimentation and iteration."

Next was Vinay Nayak K, Senior Manager – Mobility Practice, Collabera, while speaking on the above subject he highlighted on mobile experience in retail, mobile shopping experience and what to expect in future.

Finally it was by Darshan Sonde, Software Architect, Y Media Labs. According to him, - understanding user behavior with different devices is important in creating a mobile solution. Users use different mobile devices for different purposes. People hesitate to use their credit cards online. Building own credit card payment gateway is expensive; instead use user trusted frameworks like Paypal, Google Wallet, Apple iBeacon, Passbook. Retail trend is moving to hardware specifically to provide relevant information to users. It’s affordable and third party services available to make it easy like Estimote, Paypal Beacon.

The successive session was on “Discovery Apps: Providing Info that you may think Never Existed”. Ramjee Ganti, Head Technology, Justeat India said, a great discovery app should use location (where), current activity (what) and past timeline (when) of user in a non intrusive way and help the user discover useful information. And also highlighted on with the app space being so crowded, the apps that have a chance are those which figure out how to make the users aware of things they might find useful, hidden in an information overload.

The next session was on “Mobile Banking: A Smarter Way to Bank” and the speakers who talked about this are Mahesh Kolar, Director & Global Head Mobility Application Services, Dell and Suhas Desai, Practice Lead - Mobile Security, Aujas.

While speaking on the topic “Automation for Testing Mobile Apps”,  Vasanthi Ramesh, Director SET, Flipkart.com said "The mobile applications testing is a challenge due to the multiple dimensions in mobile space and due to the accelerated pace of mobile app development. This talk covers the approach to tackle the testing of mobile apps. It puts forth the automation architecture for acceptance testing of apps using open source tools and a demo of the automation framework."

Rajesh Krishnamurthy, Head - Mobile & Digital Channels, Wipro technologies while discussing on the topic “Future of Mobile Banking” he said mobile banking is a serious investment area for banks and this creates opportunities for product companies that want to provide value added services. He also highlighted that mobile payments will be another area for high growth that entrepreneurs can focus.

This event was supported by Vserv.mobi, Startapp, Amazon Web Services, Smaato, Pluralsight and Tata Docomo.