ASIA PACIFIC – Mindshare has partnered with Next Billion to launch the first new technology-enabled platform aimed at rural consumers in South Asia, South East Asia, Africa and Latin America. The partnership comes after the launch of the GEMS (Growth and Emerging Market Solutions) hub out of Singapore.
Next Billion, one of the landmark initiatives by Newton Circus, is a company dedicated to creating technology innovations for improving consumers’ lives in emerging markets. In partnership, Next Billion and Mindshare will promote and adapt new technology-enabled platforms to deliver marketing and data collection services suitable for these consumers.
The first such platform is ‘Mobile Movies’, which to date has been successfully piloted in Myanmar, Indonesia and Vietnam with the support of Unilever, Friesland Campina and Microsoft. Microsoft is also the mobile and management system technology partner. With the support of Mindshare and WPP companies, Next Billion is now rolling out Mobile Movies to several parts of South East Asia and South Asia and preparing to launch in Africa.
Gowthaman Ragothaman, Chief Operating Officer, Mindshare APAC commented on the partnership:
‘As the name Next Billion suggests, the opportunity is huge. In fact it’s not just a billion – it’s the next 3 billion. Many of our large multinational companies still build their marketing designs around the top cities and towns of emerging markets but few actually address the challenges of non-urban consumers e.g. in Red River Delta of Vietnam. That requires a different design and a different infrastructure. It also places huge challenges on tracking, accountability and measurement of effectiveness. With Next Billion, we want to solve these challenges and provide marketers with technology-enabled solutions, they didn’t have before’.
Daryl Arnold, founder & CEO, Newton Circus, welcomes the partnership opportunity commenting:
‘Our Next Billion partnership with Mindshare will scale our positive impacts in rural communities. For example, Mobile Movies establishes networks of local agents who screen entertaining films to bring together rural communities, and then leverage these unique group opportunities to market MNC products that drive positive behavioural change. It’s a triple win: good for the consumers who gain access to new goods and services, good for the thousands of local agents we employ, and good for our MNC brand partners that engage emerging market consumers and crowd source fast reliable data.’
