SJMSOM, IIT Bombay

Virgin Mobile: Final Project report on VAS

Submitted By:
Saurabh Saini,

SJMSOM, IIT Bombay

 SJMSOM, IIT Bombay

INTRODUCTION

About Virgin Group:

Virgin Group Ltd. is a British branded venture capital conglomerate organisation founded by
business tycoon Richard Branson, sometimes perceived as a conglomerate. The core business areas
are travel, entertainment and lifestyle. Virgin Group's date of incorporation is listed as 1989 by
Companies House, who class it as a holding company; however Virgin's business and trading
activities date to the 1970s. The net worth of Virgin Group Ltd as of September 2008 is £5.01 billion.
It consists of more than 400 companies around the world.

Virgin Group operates its headquarters at The School House, 50 Brook Green in the London Borough
of Hammersmith and Fulham.

Although Branson retains complete ownership and control of the Virgin Brand, the commercial set-
up of companies using it is varied and complex. Each of the companies operating under the Virgin
brand is a separate entity, with Branson completely owning some and holding minority or majority
stakes in others. Occasionally, he simply licenses the brand to a company that has purchased a
division from him, such as Virgin Mobile USA, Virgin Mobile Australia, Virgin Radio and Virgin
Music(now part of EMI).

The brand name "Virgin" arose when Branson and a partner were starting their first business, a
record shop. They considered themselves virgins in business. The current Virgin logo was originally
sketched on a paper napkin and remains largely unchanged since 1979.

Virgin has created more than 200 branded companies worldwide, employing approximately 50,000
people, in 29 countries. Global branded revenues in 2008 exceeded £11 billion (approx. US$17
billion).

Virgin Mobile:
irgin Mobile is a brand used by many mobile phone service providers based in the United Kingdom
and operating in India, Australia, Canada, South Africa, the United States and France; the brand
survived only briefly in Singapore. The international Virgin Mobile businesses each act as
independent entities, usually in a partnership between Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group and an
existing phone company. Virgin Group provides the brand, and the phone company operates the
network infrastructure.

Virgin Mobile was the UK's first Mobile Virtual Network Operator when it launched in the United
Kingdom in 1999. It does not maintain its own network but instead contracts to use the existing
network(s) of other providers.

Virgin Mobile India:

On 2008-03-01, Virgin launched the Mobile brand in India through a franchise arrangement with
Tata Teleservices. This is Virgin’s seventh launch globally and its largest investment to date in India,
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said Branson, noting that the Indian market was very attractive, growing like none other in the
world. The Cellular Operators' Association of India (COAI) had opposed the tie-up, alleging that it
amounted to Virgin's entry into India as a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) which is
currently not allowed in India, due to prevalent regulations. However on 2008-03-29, the
Department of Telecom (DoT) cleared the deal after clarification from Tata Teleservices indicated
that Virgin had not entered India as an MVNO.

Project Title: Survey report on VAS

Methodology:-

Online survey:

A questionnaire is floated among the students of IIT Bombay and to the friends in various other
colleges. The received responses are analysed.

Please find the responses and the questions in the excel sheet attached.

Sample Information:

For the survey , sample of 30 students is taken.

N= 30

Age group: 19 – 24 yrs.

Male female ratio: 1:4

Target audience :

1. All the audience is College students.

2. All the surveyed crowd is having internet access at their places.

3. Behaviourally students in the campus are behaviourally mature and study oriented and look for
value for money rather than lavishly spending for fun.

4. Culture of college internal mail is very strong and that’s why there is huge potential for internet
usage over mobiles .

Questionnaire for the survey:

Q1. Do you own a Mobile Phone?
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Q2. Which Handset?

Q3. Which Mobile Operator's Services do you use?

Q4. Monthly spend on Mobile Phone?

Q5a). In what percentage is your phone-balance utilized to avail Voice Call Services approx.?

Q5b). In what percentage is your phone balance utilized to avail VAS Services approx.?

Q6. Have you used the following services? If yes, then how often?Tick whereever applicable [Caller
Ring Back Tunes (Tring/Hello/Caller Tunes)]

Q6. Have you used the following services? If yes, then how often?Tick whereever applicable
[Ringtones]

Q6. Have you used the following services? If yes, then how often?Tick whereever applicable
[Wallpapers]
Q6. Have you used the following services? If yes, then how often?Tick whereever applicable [SMS
subscription packs - Jokes/Astrology/Tips etc]
Q6. Have you used the following services? If yes, then how often?Tick whereever applicable [Cricket
Scores]
Q6. Have you used the following services? If yes, then how often?Tick whereever applicable [Games
Download]
Q6. Have you used the following services? If yes, then how often?Tick whereever applicable [Full
Track Song Download]
Q6. Have you used the following services? If yes, then how often?Tick whereever applicable [Video
Download]
Q7. What would make you increase the frequency of usage of these services?
Q8. How often you access internet using your phone? [Kindly tick]
Q9a). If you access internet using your phone, then name a few websites which are most visited
otherwise write "I don't access"
Q9b). If you don't access internet using your phone, the give reason ? otherwise tick "I access"
Q 10. How often you access a social networking websites using your phone in a day? [Plz tick]
Q11. If you access a social networking website using your phone, then which website? otherwise
write "I don't access"
Q12. How often you upload photographs and videos using your phone? [Plz tick]
Q13. If you upload photographs and videos using your phone then where, which website? otherwise
write "I don't"
Q14. Your Age?
Q15. Sex?
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Key Findings:
Internet enabled cell phones = 27 and internet access , so 90 % of the cell phones are internet
enabled.

Connections:
Airtel 23
BPL 3
BSNL 3
Vodafone 11
Idea 5
Tata indicom and 9
docomo
mtnl 1
Virgin 5

Airtel
BPL
BSNL
Vodafone
Idea
Tata indicom and docomo
mtnl
Virgin

Market Share

Rental Bills Analysis:

Rental (monthly) Number of customers

Below 300 23
300-800 24
800-1200 4
Above 1200 9
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Distribution of monthly phone expenditure among VAS usage and Voice call
services

Where

series 1 = % of total spending on voice call services

series 2 = % of total spending on VAS

Usage pattern of VAS

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Ringtones and wallpapers

Not used 40
often
Rarely 16 Rarely
Series1
Not used
often 4
0% 50% 100%

SMS subscription packs

Not used 24
rarely used 24
Often used 12

Cricket scores

Not used 34
rarely used 19
Often used 7
Games download

Not used 42
rarely used 16
Often used 2

Video and audio downloads

Not used 42
rarely used 12
Often used 6

Suggestions for the increased usage of the service

Reduce tariff 44
Better content 6
All 10
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So the higher priority is to reduce the tariff as the survey reveals. Since the target audience is mainly
students who are already having broadband internet connections , I think content wise they seems
to be satisfies and their main purpose is basically to use it for social networking sites access and mail
checks.

The usage pattern follow the normal curve in the usage pattern of internet over cell phones .

Most popular websites

Most popular websites among the internet users over cell phones are :

Google : 23%

college mail : 7%

cric info : 4% approx.

Gmail : 26%

Social networking sites : orkut , facebook and very rarely twitter

Social networking sites:

According to the survey, 57 % of the people don’t prefer to go for social networking sites and among
the rest 43 % only 7% use it often.

Social networking site usage:

Website Number of Percentage

name people (%)
orkut 16 64% orkut
%Faceboo
6 24% %Facebook
k
twitter 3 6% twitter
Total 25

Suggestions for improvement:

According to the survey its clear the majority of the crowd(>60 %) is satisfied but the major reasons
for dissatisfaction are:

1. High tariff (14%)

2. Content (8%)
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Strange finding: Despite of having internet access at place the majority of the crowd (>90%) is using
internet over cell phones.

Uploading of photographs and videos using your phone

So It can be concluded that 70 % of the crowd is not interested . Among the rest 30% students like to
upload photographs on facebook and orkut in equal proportions.

Promotional Strategy Followed:

Virgin GSM are provided to the target customers along with a sipper bottle with very attractive call
rates.

Conclusion:
1. Airtel is the choice of the majority, followed by Vodafone, Virgin has started penetrating the
market through its lucrative schemes. Students at IIT are presently adoring VIRGIN
connections more due to its better connectivity than any other mobile phone.
2. Majority of crowd have monthly spending ranging from 300 – 800 rupees.
3. Mostly students spends on voice services more than VAS services .
4. Despite of having internet access at place the majority of the crowd (>90%) is using internet
over cell phones.
5. Games video and audio downloads are very less .
6. SMS subscription , cricket scores and ringtones and caller tunes are performing good among
the crowd due to IPL season.
7. Orkut and facebook are the two very prominent social networking sites across the sample.
8. Gmail and google are the two websites scoring around 30% of the total hits.
9. Main usage of internet over phones is checking mails and surfing social networking sites.
10. www.Cricinfo.com is doing well in this season.
11. Uploading photographs over phones is very rare, reason may be availability of laptops and
digital cams among most of the students studying in management and engineering streams.
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Promotion report:
Promotion 1: Virgin GSM were provided to the target customers along with a sipper bottle with very
attractive call rates and better network availability.

Promotion 2: Virgin Mobile India conducted online T shirt designing competition and thereby given a
proper platform for all V turks interact and also made our job easy by indirectly communicating the
message to the students regarding the project.

Sales report:
30 virgin GSM sim cards were sold in the IIT Bombay campus. The target audience was strictly youth
specifically students (to clarify further, none of the sims is sold to any of the employee ,faculty or
worker employed in the campus).

Number of sales done: 33

Learning from the activity:

It was a great learning opportunity for us to get the key insights of marketing, understanding the
consumer behaviour ,the youth segment, regarding the usage of Value Added Services and there
requirements.

Initially Sales target given to us was perceived as very cumbersome and meaningless , to be frank,
but later it turned up as the most meaningful part of the internship.

We, V Turks, got to meet the people and got an opportunity to meet and talk to them regarding
their problems, needs, preferences and priorities. We came to know the importance of educating
retailers, point of sale publicity and developed an understanding the burdensome documentation
involved in the whole proves of a new connection which will help us in formulating appropriate
strategies in the later stages of our career.

Recommendations:
Most of the things were executed well but still there were some issues regarding stock outs which in
my opinion could have been prevented by better logistics and planning. On the whole, I thing the
project was a huge success for both, students and execution team.