Vuclip launches Mira India’s first mobile video portal for Women

Mobile video service Vuclip has launched mobile video portal called Mira. Mira is dedicated to women in India. Vuclip is claiming to be India’s first mobile video portal. The content on the portal includes topics like health, beauty, parenting, cookery, career and entertainment. Mira accessed from any Internet enabled mobile phone.

The portal is targeted towards the new age women who are independent, tech savvy and full of life. Mira! sources content from 30 or so Indian and global content providers, and offers free access to videos on varied topics like health, beauty, fashion & style tips, parenting, cooking recipes, career, entertainment, celeb speak, astrology and more.

According to the company, the term “mira”, meaning “wonderful” in Latin and “prosperity” in Sanskrit, represents the woman. During the launch event, Vuclip’s Vice President Advertising Sales, Meera Chopra, said that only 14% of its 11 million users in India are women. With the release of this women centric channel though, Vuclip expects to double its female userbase. Chief guest Kiran Walia, Women Development Minister for Delhi, also noted that mobile penetration among women in our country is only about 28%, as compared to 40% among men. She hoped that more mobile content oriented towards women would boost cellphone adoption among them. In my opinion, giving them all the Angry Birds games for free would be a lot more effective.

The Mira! can be accessed from a all variety of phones, from an entry-level, GPRS-enabled Java handset to a top-end smartphone. To view website http://mira.vuclip.com in your phone’s browser.

Vuclip has also conducted a survey that states around 60 per cent women respondents from India use their handsets as a primary source of entertainment. Commenting on the findings, Meera Chopra, Vuclip’s VP (advertising) in India, said, “Currently, women constitute only 14 per cent of the total 11 million users on Vuclip in India. But with the launch of Mira!, we hope to double the number from the existing 1.54 million by the end of this year.”

Vuclip global vice president for marketing Judith Coley, said, “In contrast to the developed countries, internet in the developing world is arriving on phones before even traditional computers. About 59 per cent of internet users in India get online only via mobile phones. We hope that Mira! will help spark a revolution in the way women’s mobile content is perceived – by content providers, brands, and women themselves. Cisco predicts that mobile video will increase 25-fold to account for over 70 percent of total mobile data traffic between 2011 and 2016. As the world’s leading independent mobile video destination, Vuclip is uniquely positioned to help usher in mobile adoption among women through enriching mobile content. Vuclip thinks women are wonderful and is honored to be able to bring them the best of web video for their entertainment snack.”

Around 40,000 women from 176 countries took part in the survey, including 13,000 from India.

Women’s areas of interest, according to the survey, include watching TV soaps, cute/funny videos, sports, home and lifestyle, news, celeb gossip and amazing/whacky videos on their mobile apart from movies and music. Thirty seven per cent women from India reported that they spend more than one hour daily on TV, print or radio while close 32 per cent women reported that they spend over an hour to access mobile content every day. The five day long study consisted of 65 per cent women aged 18-35 years among the Indian respondents, while 24 per cent were under 18 years and another 11 per cent were over 36 years.

Headquartered in Milpitas, California, Vuclip provides video on the fly – on any device and in any country. According to the company, it delivers more than 16 million videos every day to consumers hailing from 200-plus countries. The company also has offices in Mumbai, Los Angeles, Singapore, Shenzhen and Beijing.

The company had earlier set up Starlight Cinema, a site where you can watch trailers, movie clips, short feature films, song reviews, etc. in various Indian languages. To deliver this service, Vuclip entered into content partnerships with UTV Motion Pictures, Reliance Entertainment, Vega, Whacked Out Media and MAA TV. In an interview with Techcircle.in last year, Salman Hussain, vice-president (business development) and MD (India & Middle East) of Vuclip discussed the growth of the company’s products and its vision for the Indian market.