BANGALORE: Following a launch in Chennai, directorial advertising player Getit Infoservices announced the launch of getitFREEADS on voice, along with Getit SMS App and its foray into WAP service with m.getit.in and m.freeads.in as part of its growth plans in Karnataka.
The services will soon be launched in other towns and cities of the country where the player is already present in the form of yellow pages and FreeAds publication. Getit has launched directories in 40 cities in the country.
Buoyed by the almost 100 percent tele-density of markets that lead consumption in India and the advent of 3G services in the country, Getit says that search is bound to shift to mobile devices. The company has considered the fact that 70 per cent of the mobile devices of the estimated 700 million connections are not smart phones and hence launched voice ads and voice search as well as the WAP services.
getitFREEADS is a free classifieds service available to consumers via a combination of phone and online. GETIT SMS App will provide local search capabilities throughout India for people without smartphones and without the cost of using GPRS data. Getit recently launched its WAP services- ‘m.getit.in‘ and ‘m.freeads.in‘ which will enable both smart phone and non-smart phone users with simple, convenient and intuitive way for searching buying various product/services.
Getit, in its next phase of expansion in Karnataka is targeting 100 per cent growth this year. The company is targeting 20,000 small and medium enterprises (SME) advertisers.
Getit says that its database has listings of over 500,000 ME and utilities in Karnataka which is being enhanced to cover more businesses in existing locations and penetrate new towns. The company is also planning to launch new mobile applications for its information services and is exploring alliances with various media companies.
Getit founder and chairman Ramesh Gupta said, "Getit pioneered yellow pages in India and introduced directional advertising to the country. Having completed 25 years in Karnataka, we are proud to launch a new media agnostic identity where information is available across new digital platforms as well as in print."
The company plans out its mass media communications and marketing spends every quarter. For the current quarter, it has earmarked Rs.40 million - mainly towards BTL activities. For the next quarter, once it has rolled out the digital services in some more cities, the company plans to allocate funds towards mass communication mediums such as regional television, radio, local print and digital media, revealed Getit CEO Sidharth Gupta.
Getit is exploring new alliances with several companies in the media, telecom and other sectors. Such alliances will allow companies to drive new growth opportunities by engaging at the technological, marketing and business levels. Getit also has a new presence on the social media. It is now present on Facebook, Twitter and You Tube among others. The concept revolves around innovative characters-‘Ping- Pong‘ and ‘Findy‘.
"This presence across social media platforms enable consumers a two-way communication with the service provider and provides an added benefit for the advertisers," said Sidharth.
