Virgin Mobile

Virgin Mobile in India has tried to change the rules of the game. It is the first company to offer money for receiving incoming calls. It is the first company to offer free roaming services in India without any extra fees. It is the first company to introduce lifetime validity free connections with certain handsets. Virgin mobile is the first MVNO in the world. MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) is a company that provides mobile phone services but does not have its own licensed frequency allocation of radio spectrum and may be not have full infrastructure. Virgin mobile is one of 200 brands of Umbrella brand, VIRGIN.

Virgin mobile in India has segmented the market based on age of customers. Targeting youth of age 18-25 is a major aim of Virgin mobile. Youth is an obvious choice for any mobile service provider for obvious reason. There are around 210 million youth in the age category of 18-25, of which around 68 million owns phones. So still 66% market is to be tapped. Young people are heavy users of mobile services whether it is routine calls, sms or other value added service.  Virgin has promoted its products and services targeting youth population only. It has positioned itself a youth centric company. In fact all of the advertisements of Virgin have that witty taste of youthfulness. It has been seen that Virgin mobile has focussed on easy tariff plans and value added services.

Initially when Virgin mobile was launched in India, they were distributing Virgin services through their self-operated Kiosks. This distribution strategy did not work for virgin as most of the customers in India buy services from most of the local shops and Virgin was not available at these stores. So innovative branding, lucrative tariff plans, Paid incoming calls, brand name of Virgin and Tata Teleservices did not pay to the Virgin mobile as expected.  Now Virgin Mobile has tied up with retail chain of ESSAR for their distribution network. One of the most innovative distribution strategies adopted by Virgin is selling SIM online. Keeping in mind the increased usage of internet by the youth of the country, this strategy will pay off in the long term.

The initial advertisement campaigns of Virgin were quite innovative and attracted lot of young customers. In one such advertisement, a young person is shown, caught by traffic policeman, who has violated traffic rules . The young person wins the sympathy of the policeman when the angry father of young person tells policeman not to leave his son and give him severe punishment. Later on it is revealed that angry father is none other than his friend. The advertisement ends with Tagline “Think Hatke”.

In India, where the mobile service market is highly competitive and the major competitors have captured the large market share. It is not a long-term strategy to attract youth with innovative advertisements. Somewhere down the line, company has to offer some tangible services to retain customers.

Second probable challenge for Virgin is that it has got license in CDMA and the majority market is captured by GSM operators. So converting GSM users to CDMA users is one another big challenge.

Whether Virgin mobile survives in years to come is the time-bound question. But one thing is sure that Virgin Mobile in India has made communications channels very innovative.