Vikram Raichura, MD, Viva Connect

Leader Speak May 07, 2014

Vikram Raichura, MD, Viva Connect

Leader Speak

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

& diverse customer needs. We ideate, develop, and deliver “AWESOME” mobile initiatives and experiences for Brands, Television Networks and Enterprises creating a POSITIVE BUSINESS IMPACT. We empower businesses to engage, gratify & analyze their customers across the mobile horizon, powering BILLIONS of interactions over Voice, Missed Calls, SMS, Email and Mobile Apps. Vikram Raichura, Managing Director, Viva Connect, An Entrepreneur with more than 11 years of experience in Managing and Growing VivaConnect as a formidable player in the Enterprise Communication Segment. He defines the road map to revolutionize the communication experience through a blend of technology and innovation. This self‐styled first generation entrepreneur aims at exploring the opportunities in Cloud Communications. He believes in ‘work playfully’ and infuses this culture at his work place too. He favors to embrace the individuals potential that go beyond the accumulated knowledge and performance. He envisions VivaConnect to become the ‘preferred’ platform for Cloud Communication across industries. His interests are management training, new technology, photography and cooking. Replying to Anil Mascarenhas of IIFL, Vikram Raichura says, “We manage a three way traffic 365 days a year through Voice Calls, Missed calls, Emails & SMS. Our service platforms make over 3 crore impressions daily through transaction and marketing services.” Give us a brief overview of the mobile marketing business in India. Could you share some numbers? What is the outlook? Mobile marketing has grown to become a hard to miss medium of brand communication. Just over a few years, businesses and enterprises have realized the importance of this media vehicle and its potential reach to communicate with the mass audience. The next few years will be a challenging time where brands will resort to action marketing with mobile being the key driver. Mobile will augment online and traditional media campaigns to drive engagement and community building for the brands. Today there are 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 just 112 million Indians take that couch ahead facing TV Sets. Needless to say mobile wins hands down against every media vehicle of mass reach. What are changing trends here? 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 are connected to internet over mobile. This leaves approx 723 million mobile devices which can only be reached through the traditional approach of mobile phones i.e. Voice, SMS and USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data). That’s how Indian mobile market differs from global ones. Currently the trend is of Right here, Right Now services. For instance consider the recent popular ‘Instant Mobile Refill Service’ offered as an Instant Gratification Marketing by Brands to their customers. It acts as an instant gift in form of free mobile talk‐time, that customers can easily avail over a missed call over a purchase or when engaged with brands marketing activity. There is no waiting for rewards or dealing with useless gift stuff.

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Viva Connect

Trends in Indian markets are driven highly over missed call services. Brands who want to reach this set of audience and who are in media dark areas can use Voice services very effectively to break the language and time barrier. India is a land of cultures and language holds an important place in every Indian heart. Nelson Mandela had quoted, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” Its stands absolutely true and that’s what we target with our voice services for media dark region. Mobile has penetrated rural zones and to connect with them, nothing like speaking in their language. Not only it’s a time saver but it establishes a connect effectively in their heart. Explain to us your business model. Give us a revenue‐break‐up from various segments. Our business model is focused around services. We believe in creating a value for our clients and treat ourselves as an extension to our client. We do not believe in selling our inventory for the heck of it, but we sell our inventory only if it fits into the overall brand strategy and the long term objectives of our clients. We devise complete mobile strategies for our clients and provide state of the art solutions around the overall product Plans. Talking of revenue, Voice based services hold a substantial contribution followed by Mobile Apps and SMS. Among segments BFSI accounts for 24%, Brands and Media to 28%, Resellers are 9%, SME’s total at 16%, Enterprises are 18% and Government services sum up to 5%. We have a solution for every segment which will empower them to interact and engage with their customers over mobile phones, be it a Voice IVRS, SMS, Mobile ads, Mobile apps, Mobile media strategies and lot more. Brief us on your financials. What is the outlook for the coming year? This year VivaConnect has crossed 20 crore and we estimate it to touch 50 crore by 2015 as the market is growing exponentially. Brands shall be on the front seat of consuming mobile services as a favorite medium for customer engagement. What are the opportunities and challenges in this business? The grown interest from Brands for integrating mobile services in their Advertising and Marketing campaigns, has brought great opportunity for us. Now the challenge lies in connecting with their desired target group and delivering of message efficiently. While doing so, the following distinction plays an important role. The urban population is densely exposed to media vehicles at every corner, so for them mobile is a means of easy engagement with a brand. For this segment, wrapping services with creativity plays a vital role making it stand apart from marketing herd.Mobile apps are the opportunists here. Whereas rural regions are sparsely touched by media vehicles, so there mobile plays dual role of taking the brand to people and building up the engagement. For this segment ease of access, affordability and connectivity (like usage of rural language, etc)plays an important role. Missed call, Toll‐free and SMS services fare extremely well here. Besides we love challenges as every new challenge brings a new opportunity!



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Are there regulatory issues which can cause a concern for your business? How are you dealing with the same? Since Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), introduces policies to safeguard privacy of mobile subscribers, we make sure to play our part very well, we abide by their regulations. Implementing policies is not a problem as we own the infrastructure for our services. Moreover we make sure to enlighten every brand we work with about TRAI’s regulations well beforehand. Even our clients willingly agree as if the end user is unhappy (their customers), then it’s not worth a penny! Tell us more about your infrastructure. We at VivaConnect cover the whole mobile platform to offer Voice calls, Missed Calls,Mobile Apps, SMS and Email services. Leading the operations from our Mumbai head office, we’ve built the largest infrastructure for Voice and Missed call based services with 1200 PRI Lines, than can handle a daily traffic of 30 million calls. We have a corporate office at Delhi that handles clients from Northern India. What is our daily traffic? We manage a three way traffic 365 days a year through Voice Calls, Missed calls,Emails & SMS. Our service platforms make over 3 crore impressions daily through transaction and marketing services. Voice calls amount for nearly 50% of the total traffic with PAN India campaigns, while Emails and SMS add up the rest. How many clients do you work with? Name some of your leading clients? We have clients from every walk of life. To begin with consumer brands we handle engagement campaigns for leading brands like Hindustan Unilever, Colgate Palmolive, ITC limited, Cadbury’s India, Johnson and Johnson, etc. Then there’s BFSI enterprises as Central Bank of India, Vijaya Bank, Saraswat Bank, ShareKhan, ICICI bank, Kotak, Reliance, etc. Among television channels we have Doordarshan, Sony Television and ZEE Entertainment Limited. We’ve even initiated services for leading Political Parties during 2014’s pre‐election campaigning. Who are your competitors? There’s no direct competition with any company as none other offers the range of mobile marketing services as VivaConnect does. Ours is in‐house setup for Mobile Apps, Email and SMS platforms. Our individual services of Missed calls and SMS do face competition from likes of ValueFirst, Netcore, Zipdial, Mobilox, etc. What are some of the innovations taking place in the industry. Comment about your LiveTalk product. These days our industry is mesmerized by Mobile Apps and myriad possibilities offered over it. Everyone from E‐retailer to restaurants and Big budgeted movies to political parties are fancying mobile apps. It’s the flavour of the season. LiveTalk is a groundbreaking product that audio broadcasts live events over a phone call. It holds a phenomenal capacity of connecting over 1,00,000 calls in a span of 3 hours.



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With LiveTalk all one has to do is dial in a number (like any other call) and listen to the event. The service was awarded with Mobbys Award 2013 for Best New Service in Mobile Industry. How was the response to the Narendra Modi campaign conducted from your end? Bharatiya Janata Party, under the leadership of Shri Narendra Modi had opted for LiveTalk to reach audiences across India, going beyond those gathered at the rally. The idea was to have people connected with rally regardless of their location. Thus LiveTalk made it easy to access over any make of mobile & kept it free of premium charges or subscriptions. The response was so overwhelming that we registered thousands of calls even during the days when there was no rally. Which also encouraged the client to establish a special service of playing recorded messages. Thus you can currently listen to Shri Narendra Modi’s speech (Excerpts from his Rally) by dialing a number. Who do you think will win the elections? This Lok Sabha Election was quite interesting as political parties took hold of new age media vehicles to reach masses. Turning it out to be the most expensive general election in the country. So now hoping that all of this proves worthwhile and the nation gets the best governance of all time. No matter whoever wins the elections, we hope for a government that’s of the people, by the people and for the people, in the true sense! You say voice is the near future of mobile industry. Could you explain the same. To what extent will it benefit regional languages? When it comes to build a connect between brands and their customers over mobile, voice service outwits all and proves to be highly credible. In India, talking to an actual human being is highly preferred over an IVR recording. Use of Regional language is and will always stand strong then be it rural or urban consumer since every individual cherishes strong affinity towards his mother tongue. Moreover, when it comes to using regional language over a mobile service, then SMS &USSD demands handset compatibility which proves to be a big hindrance, voice service surpasses this barrier easily. What are your expansion plans? How would you fund it? As our services are constantly evolving with growth of technology, the expansion is quite perennial phenomena. Being specific, we are targeting global markets by 2015. We fund our ventures through internal accrual and might go for Venture funding towards end of 2014. What is the shareholding pattern of the company? Any plans to sell stake? Currently it’s a self invested venture with 50% Capital sharing between Chairman K. N. Raichura and Managing Director Vikram Raichura. No plans to sell the stakes, though we would definitely give a thought to interesting collaborations that come our way, especially from companies that lead the communication space. Your advice to someone who wishes to join this industry? This market is huge enough for each one to have its piece of cake, I earnestly saywelcome to the industry! What is your employee strength? Any plans to ramp up? Your message to anyone who wishes to join your firm?



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We operate from our offices in Mumbai and Delhi, with an astonishing workforce of 120 driving mobile services to build a connect for businesses and enterprises. Anyone keen to produce awesome work is welcome at VivaConnect. Our door is always open to bright minds that have zeal for excellence.



Vikram Raichura, MD, Viva Connect

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