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VivaConnect touts 'zero cost' user engagement service via mobile

Businesses can leverage missed calls, voice, e-mail, apps, and SMS-based products to offer, at zero cost to users, services such as alerts, notifications, voting, product sampling, surveys, and feedback submission.
Written by Abhishek Baxi, Contributor

VivaConnect empowers businesses to engage, and analyze their customers across the mobile horizon, with products such as returning "missed calls" and live audio streaming of events.

According to Vikram Raichura, managing director of VivaConnect, the unique selling point of VivaConnect’s offerings is that the services operate on zero cost, zero literacy, and available across India, supported by every mobile handset.

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VivaConnect touts a communication ecosystem over mobile with a range of products based on missed calls, voice, e-mail, apps, and SMS to deliver services such as alerts, notifications, voting, product sampling, surveying, and feedback submission.

For instance, VivaConnect's product "freebi" enables Central Bank of India customers to check their account balance simply over a missed call. When an account holder gives a missed call to the prescribed number, he promptly receives an SMS furnishing details of his account balance--saving the user phone credits.

Communication over missed calls is a unique cultural trend in India. VivaConnect builds over the trend to provide customer services at no cost to the customers, and without the need to set up call centers.

Earlier this month, VivaConnect launched "LiveTalk", a service that enables live audio streaming of events over a phone call. The caller can listen to the broadcasted event at the rate of a regular phone call without any data plan, app purchase, or service subscription. The service was showcased in a recent political rally in Rewari to broadcast Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi's speech. On the launch day, over 100,000 unique callers dialed in to hear Modi's speech.

The service allows extending the reach of events to diverse demographics in far flung areas in India to achieve mass involvement. The company claims that the service can connect over a million callers during a three-hour event.

Vikram positions VivaConnect as a creative mobile marketing company, and claims to have the largest infrastructure in India for Voice and Missed Call Services managing a daily traffic of 15 million outbound calls. The company has a diverse clientele in banks, stock broking firms, media houses, TV networks, educational institutions, and more. Essentially, the service allows brands and enterprises to connect with their customers over mobile regardless of industry vertical or customer demographics.

In my e-mail interview with a company spokesperson, most answers included ostentatious selling of products and were non-committal on any information about how the service was driving business impact. 

Vikram was very excited about the growing demand for mobile marketing solutions in India. "Consider TRAI's statistics that states there are approximately 867 million mobile phone subscribers in India, whereas there were 550 million Internet users. The figure makes it explicitly clear that any service pushed over mobile would undoubtedly have greater reach over online advertising," he said.

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