Mindshare India creates India’s largest audio conferencing bridge solution ‘mSamvaad’

Mindshare, a full-service media agency and part of GroupM, collaborated with Cosmic Information and Technology Limited to launch a new voice-driven platform called ‘Audio Conferencing Bridge’ called ‘mSamvaad’. The solution helps connect leading brands of the country to the audience in media-dark areas on the largest voice conferencing infrastructure with a capacity of 25,000 concurrent calls.

A large segment of Indian audience cannot be reached through the traditional or the new-age digital mediums. This problem of low penetration coupled with low levels of literacy makes it difficult for brands to surpass the barriers of communication in the remote areas. However, the rural centres of the country have been recorded as driving the telecom growth in the nation. In the Indian ecosystem, about 450 million active SIM cards are resting on feature phones, the highest across the world. This renders telecom as the medium with the largest penetration in the markets that have low access to data.

Mindshare devised a solution that uses the power of telecom as the key channel to engage, educate and create awareness through SMS, chat rooms and voice calls for one-on-ones as well as conference connections. It also enables a two-way communication on a selected basis. The key differentiator of the platform is that it operates independent of the internet and can be used with any voice-supported device, even landline and feature phones.

In its first venture, Mindshare rolled out a high-scaled engagement program for Horlicks to reach out to mothers in the media dark areas of Bihar for its new variant that improves nutrient absorption among children. The aim of the program was to generate awareness on the brand's scientific credentials through an audio message recorded in the voice of legendary Bhojpuri star, Ravi Kishan.

Mindshare’s approach to deliver the brand message via a 2-way dialogue bore great results. The Horlicks nutrient absorption communication reached 4 million unique users. The 10-minutes conference bridge saw a breakthrough of 29 percent completed listenership. Through the campaign, Mindshare answered the call for nutrition with resounding effect, 81 percent recalled the new variant for its emphasis on nutrient absorption in children. Horlicks observed an impressive increase of 33 percent TOM and 12 percent of L3M usage.

With carrier grade infra, the alliance is one of the largest in-house telecom infrastructures in India on a single location from all leading telecom operators, managed in a high-tech data centre. It has advanced servers, big-data platform, cloud backups, secured firewalls, high speed primary and backup Internet leased lines, and 24x7 power backups under the supervision of team comprising network engineers, data scientists, and engineering minds. The bridge enables massive outreach in minimum time in the most cost effective way.

Sharing his thoughts on the innovation, Niraj Ruparel, National head – mobile, Mindshare India said, “Since the past decade, our efforts have enabled number of top brands to engage their end-consumers with the most advanced and innovative voice-based solutions. Our solutions are aimed at penetrating the fragmented consumer segments of India and surpassing the barriers of communication due to low literacy rates and lack of access to data and connectivity. "mSamvaad" is one of our most successful voice product which we plan to take to the next level in the near future. We look forward to extending this platform to all prospects that are looking at customer engagement in rural India.”

“Cosmic Information & Technology is committed & will continue to leverage its large & robust Voice Infrastructure and in-house innovation lab, to co-create quality solutions, which addresses brand challenges and help them to have a simple, yet targetted delivery of message as well as meaningful conversations with their brand audience, resulting into deeper level of engagements.”, said Nilesh Bhagat, CEO, Cosmic Information and Technology Limited.

Speaking about the success of the campaign, Vikram Bahl, area marketing lead, nutrition, GSK said, “This is a laudable initiative by Mindshare India along with Cosmic Infotech and we are glad to have been a part of it. We have always undertaken efforts to create awareness around holistic nutrition, especially in rural areas and this was a great opportunity for us to achieve our objective. We look forward to many such innovations in technology that can help us deliver intended message to rural markets.”