Mobile2Win, a Mumbai based digital company, and one of the leading mobile VAS services firm is known for its media services and mobile marketing solutions as an innovator and market leader with connectivity to all telcos in the country for content and VAS services. The year began with a merger for Mobile2win with Altruist Technologies, a Chandigarh-based mobile social networking service provider.

Speaking to exchange4media on growth opportunities in mobile marketing medium, Rajiv Hiranandani, Co-founder, Mobile2Win observed, “Mobile data usage is going to increase in urban areas and in one or two years, we would also see rapid growth in downloading content from rural India and that is what is going to be the next big wave in mobile content. At Mobile2Win we are consolidating in this month and we are hoping the voice product portfolio to come up at higher number as compared to last year nevertheless, we are looking at a 20 – 30 per cent increase since last year.”

Rural VAS is turning out to be a huge opportunity, as operators are expanding into these areas. WAP portals are another area that is seen with a lot of growth, as consumer brands are adopting this platform as a mobile destination for consumers.

The mobile marketing business had advertisers, who were regular spenders with Mobile2win, cutting back on their spends, which was around 15-20 per cent during which Mobile2win “focused on other businesses to compensate the downturn”. Hiranandani explained, “For instance, we pushed incremental content to the operator for a telcos business, and we pushed more products to other media companies. Mobile marketing is going to come back very strongly because more advertisers are coming back to the mobile marketing medium.”

He observed, “Since brands would come to mobile marketing, we are going to see an increased push from the operators into rural India to get consumers to download mobile content. We are aso going to see most of the handset operators offering phones that are as low as Rs. 800 to 1000, which includes colour handsets and therefore comes with GPRS capabilities.”