Virgin Mobile grooves to the Indian tune

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MUMBAI: For someone who is known to do things in his inimitable style, Sir Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Group did not disappoint anyone as he launched Virgin Mobile in India with a bang and how! The head honcho of Virgin Group brought out his flamboyance at the launch of Virgin Mobile branded service that would have a pan India presence, focusing on acquiring customers in the top 50 cities of the country and extending it to 1000 by the end of the year 2008.

Jamie Heywood, deputy CEO, Virgin Mobile India spoke to Prasad Ramasubramanian from Cybermedia News on the work that went behind this launch and what's in store for the consumers in India.

How long have you been working on this launch?

We were really building up momentum and gathering the network of partners and it peaked in the last four to five months. You would see a lot of very tired people around. About 250 people have been working extremely hard

Was Tata the only company you focused on since the start or were there other players you got in touch with?

Well, there are many players in India whom we looked in the initial stages but what convinced us that Tata was the right company as they are trustworthy. And their network, as I am a Tata Indicom user, is probably the best.

What else convinced you about their ability in these markets?

Tata Indicom has about 23 million users customer base and they have reached 23 million faster than anyone else and that is how they have grown in the mobile market.

Could you talk on the exemplary features of the service?

With this launch, we are bringing a lot of industry firsts for our customers. First, Virgin Mobile customers will get 10 paisa credit for every in-coming minute they receive from any network.

Second is the easy upgrades and Virgin Mobile is India's first CDMA service where all customers will be on RUIM (SIM)-based phones, thereby giving them the convenience of upgrading their phones without having to change their number or re-enter their address book.

Other enticing features include the fact that we are the only CDMA service brand to offer our customers a handset range that would be 100 per cent color and 100 per cent FM-radio enabled.

Our handsets offer the country's first mirror finished clamshell phone with dual screens for less than Rs 2500 and the customers can enjoy unlimited access to V-Bytes for a simple daily charge.

What is the rationale behind instituting V-Bytes?

V- Bytes is our unique data portal which includes Virgin-selected content and it would be offered for a daily charge of Rs 5

Would we see Virgin Mobile coming up with brand ambassadors soon?

We would surely bring in other people into this in the coming time.

How challenging would Indian markets be for Virgin mobile and how would your brand fit in?

I think we have got to offer a better brand and we have been into very challenging markets before in the UK, America, France, Australia, South Africa and have done very well.

The Indian market is growing like no other market in the world. If you have got the proposition right, I think you can do well here. Remember, there are not many companies in the world which are actually paying their customers to talk.

How different would your positioning be in India?

In India, if you see there are more than 215 million Indians who fall in the age bracket of 14 -25 years old.

Over the next three years, we expect this segment to be adding over 50 million new youth subscribers and to have mobile service revenues of over Rs 350 billion.

By focusing exclusively on a single segment and by continuing to deliver innovative services that cater to this segment's distinct needs, we believe Virgin Mobile can capture more than 10 per cent of this incremental market within three years of launch.




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