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Mobile2Win (M2W): in brief
Type of agency: full service.
Founded: 2003.
Acquisitions: none.
Main offices: Mumbai (HQ), Delhi, Bangalore, Chandigarh, India.
Employees (in mobile): 375.
Ownership: subsidiary.
Contact details: feedback (at) mobile2win.com
Web: mobile2win.com.
Mobile Web: wap.mobile2win.com.
Recent news:
• Feb, 2009 – Altruist Group acquires Mobile2win.
• Jan 2010 – Mobile2Win expands into South East Asia and Middle East with social networking apps.
Profile submitted by: Rajiv Hiranandani, co-founder and executive director, Mobile2Win.
Profile first published: July 2010.
Mobile2Win (M2W): in depth
1) Global annual revenue from mobile: Band E $10-20 million.
2) Is the mobile business profitable? Yes.
3) How is the company funded? M2W is a subsidiary of Altruist Technologies; major shareholders are Altruist (90%) and Nexus India Capital (8%).
4) Proportion of business related to mobile: 100%.
5) Business split: mobile strategy 30%; creative 30%; and development and implementation 40%.
6) Key mobile activities: mobile messaging 30%; social networking and user-generated content (UGC) applications 30%; mobile Web 20%; mobile games 10%; mobile content provision 5%; mobile advertising 5%; mobile apps 5%.
7) Specialties/expertise:
• SMS and viral campaigns – M2W exclusively manages five short codes across all operators in India giving us unparalleled experience in handling text campaigns. As exclusive partner to Sony Entertainment Television and Freemantle’s Indian Idols, M2W handled a record number of SMS transactions on a short code.
• Mobile games and WAP sites – for six years, M2W has had a fully fledged creative, programming, design and testing team in house to customize mobile games and applications for brands.
• Social networking – M2W creates social networking solutions and UGC-based applications for brands. M2W’s chat and dating product has 90% market share across operators in India.
8) Main competitors: Active Media, Hungama, Mauj, OnMobile and Comviva (voice chat).
9) Type of clients/industries:
• Brands experimenting with a mobile presence and starting with basic campaigns such as push or pull SMS.
• Brands with a more evolved mobile strategy, requiring interactive mobile sites, on-device portals, customized applications and branded UGC applications.
• Client categories include fast-moving consumer goods, finance, retail, consumer durables and automotive.
10) Client base (click on brands to link to case studies):
• M2W has worked with over 90 brands in India and executed over 140 campaigns. These include: Domino’s Pizza; Sprite; Kellog’s; AXE; Lufthansa; Tata Racing; Pizza Hut and Standard Chartered Bank.
• M2W developed mobile sites for brands such as Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance; Kingfisher and The Cartoon Network.
• More casestudies • mobile games casestudies.
Video (TV ad – in English): Little Hearts biscuits. Starting before Valentine’s Day the aim was to steal as many hearts (or codes) as possible. Entrants had to text in two special codes – one from their pack and one from a friend’s pack – to win various prizes from mobile talk-time to a car. • Read the casestudy.
11) Geographical coverage (with % of revenues): India 100% (International expansion has just started).
12) Works most closely with (apart from clients):
• Creative agencies such as Ogilvy & Mather, Carat, Draftfcb, Contract Advertising India, Thyme Advertising & Services and Lintas Media Group.
• Indian telcos such as Reliance Mobile, Bharti, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, MTNL, Spice Telecom and Aircel. With several of these, M2W is the exclusive partner to provide chat and dating apps.
13) Best work to date:
• Indian Idol 3 – in three months the M2W platform processed over 43 million SMS votes for the hit talent show.
• Kellogg’s Coco Racer: the mobile game “Rescue Chocos from Crafty Croc” was downloaded 8,000 times, while 200,000 kids sent in the answer to the crossword on the back of the cereal box to the mobile2win short code. • news story.
• Airtel: Mobile Girlfriend: created and developed for the Indian mobile operator, this subscription-based game allowed the user to have a ‘relationship’ at their convenience – from courtship to marriage. • see casestudy.
•Thums Up (Coca-Cola): Thunder Wheels Contest – in 20 days 3.2 million consumers sent an SMS (with the unique code printed under each bottle top) to short code 58558 in the hope of winning an Apache Motorbike (one to win each hour) • see casestudy.
Video (TV ad – in Hindi): Thums-up call-to-action:
14) How do you sell mobile to your clients?
• The mobile phone is the only truly personal device.
• High level of user engagement and interactivity – always checking messages, can reply instantaneously.
• Increase ROI – lower cost means higher return.
• Send personalized and targeted messages to the consumer.
• Target specific profiles e.g. age, locations, prepaid/postpaid.
• Send the messages at the time of maximum impact.
• Excellent direct response vehicle enabling brand to build up a credible, opt–in database.
• Launch your promotion in as little as one hour.
• Measure response rates in real time.
15) What return on investment (ROI) should your clients expect from mobile? n/a
16) Membership of industry bodies/associations: there are no Industry bodies for Mobile Marketing in India except the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). M2W is a co-founder of the MMA India and Rajiv Hiranandani is co-chairman. M2W is helping the MMA produce a white paper on research and common standards for mobile marketing campaigns in India, and we are currently conducting a measurement and metrics study that brands and agencies in India can use as a benchmark for mobile campaigns and effective ROI that will shortly be circulated to all the stakeholders of the mobile marketing ecosystem in India.
17) What needs to happen to accelerate mobile over the next five years?
• More effort to evangelize this medium to Indian brands and advertising agencies.
• Relevant and effective international and Indian casestudies are needed to encourage Indian brands to experiment with mobile.
• Common standards need to be adopted by mobile and advertising agencies and brands to help measure the effectiveness of the mobile marketing.
• Credible measurement and metric studies need to be widely circulated to encourage agencies and brands to adopt standards.
• Closer co-operation between agencies and operators to ensure the sharing of relevant details and demographics of customers so campaigns can be more targeted.
18) In 2015, mobile will be… about social networking and UGC-based applications – these will have spawned massive mobile communities and prove a goldmine for advertisers and developers.
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