Love is in the airtime

Love would be in the airtime this Valentine's Day, if a Mumbai wireless content player has its way.

Mauj, a part of the Rs 100 crore People Interactive (I) Pvt Ltd that owns and operates businesses such as Shaadi.com, Fropper.com, Shaadi Point and PEP (people, events and professional) Management, is planning to woo the love-struck by launching mobile "love games" based on film classics.

Mauj has marketing rights for 800 international games and claims to develop over 20 original titles every month.

For the amorous folk, it has developed seven mobile games "" Heer Ranjha, Romeo and Juliet, Laila Majnu, Salim Anarkali, Sasi Punnu, Rapunzel and Lovelinks.

"We were looking at ways and means on how to innovate. Earlier, we had developed games on special occasions like Republic Day, Diwali and Chistmas. So Valentine's Day was one occasion, where we thought we could innovate," Arun Gupta, chief operating officer, Mauj, says.

So now you can become a hero to Heer, Juliet or even Laila, literally at the click of a button. "You can kill the goons and fight with Heer's brother as Ranjha or even help Majnu to collect hearts, letters and roses and deliver them to Laila," Gupta says. "You can also save Anarkali from getting entombed," he adds.

According to Gupta, Mauj has spent between Rs 3 lakh and Rs 10 lakh for developing each game.

"Since each game is like an asset that gives incremental reveues with each download, we are expecting good revenues across many years," Gupta says. He adds, "We are looking at a profit of between 20 and 30 per cent for these games."

The company has also developed ringtones, wallpapers and themes based on these classic tales. While each game download costs between Rs 50 and Rs 200, the ringtones and wall papers come at a price of Rs 10 each.

"These games have been made available on portals of mobile operators like Hutch, Idea and Tata Zone. This apart, we are also selling these games overseas in the United Kingdom, Austria, Australia, South Africa, Phillipines and the UAE," Gupta says. Well, a new meaning to the concept of 'Love knows no boundaries'.

"GPRS rollout by operators is speeding up and such high end colour java handsets that can support mobile entertainment downloads like wallpapers and Java games are becoming cheaper. So we expect good revenues from our innovative mobile games like these," Gupta points out.

Gupta says that the company earned revenues of "a couple of million dollars in the last 12 months". "We are, however, looking at a growth of 200 per cent for this year," he adds.

"This is because we are now focussing on launching a mass-media campaign for our company," Gupta says. "This apart, we are the master content partner for Idea's new GPRS/EDGE portal and one of the content providers for BSNL's GPRS/EDGE portal as well," he adds. Ericsson Mobility is the other content partner for BSNL.