China's Snail Mobile looking to enter India shortly via MVNO permit

Snail Mobile, a leading Chinese mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), is looking to shortly enter India, Mr Chongxian Xu, the company's global executive director (mobile markets) told ET.
Xu was speaking to ET on the sidelines of GSMA Mobile World Congress 2016 in Shanghai.
"India is on Snail's shortlist of key global markets it plans to enter in the near future, apart from the US and Africa, said Xu.

Snail Mobile is the MVNO arm of China's $300 million Snail Digital Group. Apart from mobile MVNO services, the Snail core businesses include gaming content production and publishing.

At present, Snail Mobile operates MVNO services in over 100 key cities in China by partnering with China Unicom. Snail also sells international SIM cards in over 60 countries to cater to international Chinese tourists.

Xu said Snail Mobile would shortly start scouting for potential Indian telco partners to stitch up possible revenue sharing pacts.

"India has a huge addressable mobile market and Snail will not give up on any opportunities to expand its global presence, said the company's executive director.

An MVNO, typically, provides mobile services without owning either the spectrum or the network infrastructure. It relies on it telco partner's network to deliver mobile services on its own brandname. It does so by buying bulk talk time and bandwidth from it's telecom carrier partner and selling it to its customers.
Snail Mobile's plans to enter the India come just months after the Modi government allowed global MVNOs to set up shop in India.

Leading international MVNOs such as Virgin, Lebara and TuneTalk are reportedly already eying the Indian market.


(The correspondent is in Shanghai on the invitation of GSMA)