Mumbai: Bharti Cellular Ltd, India’s premier mobile service provider, providing mobile services under the brand name AirTel, has launched a special Valentine Day promotion contest on Info Junction through its unique offering of AirTel Greetings.

Targeted mainly at the youth segment in the age group 16-29 years, an AirTel Greeting was sent to both prepaid and postpaid customers with a special voice message to participate in the contest. In operation for last 10 days, this contest has received fantastic response from AirTel customers; 9,685 customers have responded to the contest so far. The winners will get 50 couple passes to Valentine night celebration at Le Meridien. The duration of the contest is from 1 February to 14 February 2003.

Ever since its launch in Mumbai, AirTel has been bringing to the youth segment latest and most interactive applications and content driven by cutting-edge technology. Some of these applications include: ring tones, logos, cricket, games, contests, jokes, polls and SMS chat rooms (both peer to peer as well as celebrity chat rooms).

Says Bharti Cellular chief operating officer (Mumbai) Atul Jhamb: “This initiative is another step towards our goal of providing innovative experiences to our consumers. The youth segment is all about celebrations and keeping in mind this insight we have launched this contest. Such offers reflect AirTel’s belief in providing value and letting customers live every moment of being a AirTel customer.”

AirTel Greetings, available at 601(Info Junction) a simple, fun-and-cool new way to send greetings to loved ones. Launched recently by AirTel, it provides a whole host of exciting and exclusive audio snippets to customers to choose from. Customers can record their personalised message, attach one of the many different interesting audio clips available and send it to their friends anywhere in the country. The recipient will get SMS intimation about the AirTel voice greeting and s/he will need to dial in to listen to the greeting.

Moreover, customers can programme the system to send the greeting up to 30 days in advance. The categories, which are currently available, are birthdays and other occasions, love, friendship, friendly insults and a general greetings section. A special category for the Valentine’s Day has been created for the customers.

AirTel from Bharti Tele-Ventures operates services in 15 of the 22 circles in India. Bharti’s mobile footprint covers 93 per cent of all mobile phone users in India cutting across 1.8 million sq km in 16 states, touching 600 million people.

Bharti Tele-Ventures is India’s leading private sector provider of telecommunications services based on an aggregate of approximately 3.14 million customers as of 31 December 2002 consisting of approximately 2.77 million mobile and 3,17,000 fixed-line customers. The company, through its subsidiaries, also provides fixed-line, VSAT, Internet services and network solutions. The company has also commenced offering national and international long-distance services.

The company seeks to capitalise on the growth opportunities that it believes are available in the Indian market and consolidate its position to be an integrated telecommunications service provider, with a focus on mobile services.

As of 30 November 2002, approximately 94 per cent of India’s total number of mobile subscribers resided in Bharti’s existing and proposed mobile circles, according to COAI reports. Bharti Tele-Ventures was the first private sector operator to provide fixed-line services in India when it commenced providing services in the Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh circle in June 1998. The company recently launched its fixed-line services in the license areas of Haryana, Delhi, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and thus became the first private-sector service provider to provide fixed-line services in all its licensed areas.

Bharti Tele-Ventures has always believed in creating strong partnerships with its joint venture partners. Today, SingTel and Warburg Pincus are its leading partners. The other partners include leading international financial investors such as International Finance Corporation, Asian Infrastructure Fund Group and New York Life Insurance.