The launch comes at a time when brand strategists are trying to find new and compelling advertising alternatives in the wake of TRAI's tightening noose on SMS-based marketing.
Vuclip, an independent mobile video service, has officially announced the launch of India's first independent mobile movie portal, "Starlight Cinema", offering over 9,000 movie clips in 13 Indian languages - Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Punjabi, Oriya, Rajasthani, Kashmiri, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.
The launch comes at a time when brand strategists are trying to find new and compelling advertising alternatives in the wake of TRAI's tightening noose on SMS-based marketing. For the first time, Starlight Cinema will offer users the option of watching shortened feature films, movie clips, songs reviews and trailers from the latest films, even on low-end feature phones without the need to download any application.
Starlight Cinema serves content from leading content providers, including UTV Motion Pictures, Reliance Entertainment, Vega, Whacked Out Media and MAA TV.
The portal features clips, trailers and first looks from Telugu superhits such as Dookudu, Dhada, Mr. Perfect, Ye Maya Chesave as well as upcoming movies, Panjaa and Sri Rama Rajyam.
From Bollywood, the portal features movies that include Barfee, Agneepath, Rowdy Rathore, and Ladies Vs. Ricky Bahl, as well as popular names Rajneeti, Guzaarish, Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai, 7 Khoon Maaf, I Hate Luv Storys, Sarkar, Family, Tees Maar Khan and Thank You.
Starlight Cinema also provides access to trailers of latest Hollywood movies, including The Adventures of Tintin, The Awakening, Hugo and Tresspass.
Commenting on Starlight Cinema's launch, Vinod Thadani (Regional Director, GroupM, a media investment management group) says, "India is a country deeply in love with movies. India is also the world's second largest and one of the fastest growing mobile user markets. With the launch of Starlight Cinema, Vuclip has created unrivalled synergies between these two aspects by creating a mobile platform exclusively featuring movie clips, which will present compelling advertising avenues."
Says Salman Hussain (Vice President - Business Development & Managing Director, India & Middle East, Vuclip) said, "While visitors search for all sorts of videos including movies, comedy, sports, music videos, raw videos, politics, news, etc. on Vuclip, our Global Video Insights reports have consistently proven that movies remain the most searched category among mobile video consumers in India. Before officially launching Starlight Cinema as a dedicated movie portal, we wanted to be very sure that our movie platform will meet our stringent performance benchmarks and that we are offering the right advertising platform suited for Indian audiences. We are thrilled to announce that during the pilot testing stage itself, as many as 2 million movie-lovers visited Starlight Cinema generating over 11 million video views in just 100 days!"
Adds Salman, "Starlight Cinema currently features over 9,000 clips from over 350 popular movie titles in Hindi and other regional languages. In order to meet the ever-increasing demand for exclusive movie content on mobile phones, we are working with many key content providers to digitize more such movie clips from as many as 8,500 movies. We are keen to continue increasing our partnerships with the various movie-based content producers and aggregators to help them better distribute and monetize their content in an increasingly off-deck world. To make it even more appealing to our consumers, we are also launching dedicated mobile micro-sites for the various regional languages, beginning initially with one channel exclusively featuring south-Indian movie clips including Telugu movies such as Dookudu, Oosaravelli, Dhada, Mr. Perfect and Ye Maya Chesave, as well as upcoming movies Panjaa and Sri Rama Rajyam; Tamil movies such as 7 Aum Arivu and upcoming movies Poraali, Osthe, Mayakkam Enna; besides movie clips in Kannada and Malayalam."
The Starlight Cinema launch comes at a time when Vuclip has also become the first independent mobile video company to have served over 5 billion video views worldwide.