Industry Scenario:

India has 870+ million mobile phone users in India building an overall mobile tele‐density of 70.96%. What’s interesting is only 330 million read a newspaper every day, only 159 million tune into radio and 112 million Indians take that couch ahead facing TV Sets. Needless to say mobile wins hands down against every media vehicle of mass reach. Around 90% of mobile phone connections in India are prepaid and, despite the relative inexpensiveness of calls, it isn’t all that uncommon for people to tell each other, “Give me a missed call”.Today India has one of the fastest growing mobile internet adoption rate, however it’s still not as fast as foreign markets. With a total base of approx 870 million mobile connections. Only 147 million areconnected to internet over mobile. This leaves approx 723 million mobile devices which can only bereached through the traditional approach of mobile phones i.e. Voice, SMS and THEMSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data). That’s how Indian mobile market differs from global ones.

There’s money in the business, which is why Twitter recently acquired Indian company ZipDial. It is also why Facebook forged a partnership with VivaConnect, a rival of ZipDial, in November last year.

Missed call marketing is exactly what it sounds like: consumers call back in response to ads targeted at them, but hang up without connecting. Companies then call them back or send messages with deals, coupons and offers.More than that, the companies gain valuable information of customer interests, preferences and profiles so that ads can be more precisely targeted.

How does it work?And will companies theme it?To answer the second question first, they already do.For instance, in 2013, when consumer goods company Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) looked at ways to increase engagement with its consumers in Bihar and Jharkhand—it believed the two markets were relatively underserved by media—it decided to theme missed call marketing. The company set up its own mobile radio channel, ‘Kan Khajura Tesan’ (earworm station) along with a campaign to build awareness. Consumers could give a missed call to a number and, in return, receive 20 minutes of free, on-demand content, ranging from Bollywood songs to popular Hindi entertainment. The campaign seems to have struck a chord with the users and has, to date, racked up calls from around 30 million people, nearly 200 million ad impressions (the number of times callers hear the company’s ad), and the consumption of around 500 million minutes of content.

State Bank of India and GlaxoSmithKline have also themed missed call marketing, which has gained currency in recent years. Many marketers see it as an easy and cost-effective means for brands to reach out to a larger target audience, particularly in semi-urban and rural markets where Internet penetration is still low.

VivaConnect is India's largest Voice & Missed call company providing Creative Marketing solutions over MOBILE. They manage a daily traffic of 30 million outbound calls through their pool of over 1200 PRI's to meet the ever changing & diverse customer needs.‐

They have clients from every walk of life. To begin with consumer brands they handle engagement campaigns for leading brands like Hindustan Unilever, Colgate Palmolive, ITC limited, Cadbury’s India, Johnson and Johnson, etc.

Then there are BFSI enterprises as Central Bank of India, Vijaya Bank, Saraswat Bank, ShaeKhan, ICICI bank, Kotak, Reliance, etc. Among television channels they have Doordarshan, Sony Television and ZEE Entertainment Limited.

They have even initiated services for leading Political Parties during 2014’s pre‐election campaigning.

Talking of revenue, Voice based services hold a substantial contribution followed by Mobile Apps and SMS. Among segments, the following is the revenue share:

24%

28%

9%

16%

18%

5%

SEGMENTSBFSI BRANDS & MEDIA

RESELLERS SME

ENTERPRISES GOVERNMENT SERVICES