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Building a new business in the Indian market is a significant undertaking, even for one of the world's most recognized and respected brands. For Virgin Mobile India, creating the nation’s first youth-focused mobile service required an ability to scale both geographically and operationally. Given this need, Virgin Mobile India standardized on HD video conferencing solutions from LifeSize® Communications, a division of Logitech (Nasdaq: LOGI) (SIX: LOGN), enabling the company to reduce travel by 20 percent since implementation.
“I never expected video communications to be so mission critical,” said Sanjay Singh, general manager - operations for Virgin Mobile India. “We’ve cut air travel, yet productivity and collaboration have increased because everyone – from product management to marketing and IT – is meeting face to face everyday. Measured by travel savings alone, we realized our ROI in just six months.”
Founded in early 2008 as a joint venture between Tata Teleservices and Richard Branson's Virgin Group, Virgin Mobile India was Virgin’s largest investment to date in India, making it critical for the new company to scale quickly and become a viable service provider in the Indian market. However, in the year before the official launch of Virgin Mobile India, frequent travel between the company’s primary operations in Mumbai and New Delhi had become time intensive and financially restrictive. Implementing an alternative to travel became an urgent need, leading Virgin Mobile India to LifeSize.
For video conferencing to be successful for Virgin Mobile India, the systems needed to deliver superb audio/video quality, integrate easily with Virgin’s existing unified communications (UC) tools, and operate at low bandwidths considering that some of Virgin Mobile India’s locations can achieve a maximum upload speed of 512 kilobits per second. Following an evaluation process, Virgin Mobile India selected LifeSize® Room™ HD video conferencing systems for the company’s corporate offices in Mumbai and New Delhi. The system’s built-in HD multipoint control unit (MCU) allows users to establish video calls with up to six other sites, allowing teams in multiple locations to easily collaborate in real time. LifeSize systems have been so successful that Virgin Mobile India plans to expand its LifeSize network as the company adds 10 new regional offices over the next two years.
“India has been focused on establishing itself as a knowledge-based society and, with the commensurate rapid growth in broadband penetration across the country, the opportunities for Indian companies to use video conferencing have never been greater,” said Craig Malloy, chief executive officer, LifeSize Communications. “Virgin Mobile India is at the leading edge of a revolution in communications in India and LifeSize is proud to have earned its trust as a key technology provider.”
A case study detailing Virgin Mobile India’s experience with LifeSize high definition video conferencing systems is available for download online.
About Virgin Mobile India
“Virgin Mobile” brand (virginmobile.in) is India’s ‘first’ national youth-focused mobile service. “Virgin Mobile” branded services are being offered to the Indian consumers by Tata Teleservices through a brand franchise with Virgin Mobile. Virgin Mobile India will provide Tata Teleservices with experience and expertise in designing, marketing and servicing of “Virgin Mobile” branded products for the youth segment.
About Virgin Mobile
Virgin Mobile (virgin.com), a leading branded venture capital organization, is one of the world's most recognized and respected brands. Conceived in 1970 by Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin Mobile Group has gone on to grow very successful businesses in sectors ranging from mobile telephony, to transportation, travel, financial services, leisure, music, holidays, publishing and retailing. Virgin Mobile has created more than 200 branded companies worldwide, employing approximately 50,000 people, in 29 countries. Its revenues around the world in 2006 exceeded £10 billion (approx. US$20 billion).
About Tata Teleservices Limited
Tata Teleservices Limited (tatateleservices.com) spearheads the Tata Group’s presence in the telecom sector. The Tata Group had revenues of around US $62.5 billion in Financial Year 2007-08, and includes over 90 companies, over 350,000 employees worldwide and more than 3.2 million shareholders.Tata Teleservices is the pioneer of the CDMA 1x technology platform in India. It has embarked on a growth path since the acquisition of Hughes Tele.com (India) Ltd [renamed Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Limited] by the Tata Group in 2002. It launched mobile operations in January 2005 and today enjoys a pan-India presence through existing operations in all of India’s 22 telecom Circles. The company is also the market leader in the fixed wireless telephony market. The company’s network has been rated as the ‘Least Congested’ in India for last five consecutive quarters by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India through independent surveys.
About LifeSize Communications
LifeSize Communications (lifesize.com) is a world leader in high definition video communications and telepresence. Founded by industry veterans in 2003, LifeSize pioneered high definition video communications to make communicating at a distance as natural and effective as being in the same room, for anyone, anywhere. LifeSize became a division of Logitech in December 2009, sharing a vision of everywhere there is voice there should be video.
LifeSize, the LifeSize logo and other LifeSize marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of LifeSize Communications Inc. Logitech, the Logitech logo, and other Logitech marks are registered in Switzerland and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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