Red Herring Top 100 Asia Award 2012
Local VAS company among Asia’s best
VU Mobile, a leading mobile VAS (value added service) company in Bangladesh, has been selected as a winner of prestigious Red Herring Top 100 Asia Award 2012.
Red Herring, an online technology business magazine, announced its Top 100 Award in recognition of the leading private technology companies from across Asia.
The event was held on September 10-12 in Hong Kong.
Red Herring’s top 100 Asia list has become a benchmark for identifying promising new companies and entrepreneurs.
Red Herring was among the first to recognise the companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Skype, YouTube and eBay who would change way of people’s life.
It also holds top 100 US award and top 100 Europe award.
Top 100 are selected from thousands of compnaies.
Red Herring’s editorial team evaluates the companies on both quantitative and qualitative criteria such as financial performance, technology innovation, management quality, strategy and market penetration during the selection process of top 100.
This assessment of potential is complemented by a review of the track record and standing of startups relative to their peers, allowing Red Herring to see past the buzz and make the list a valuable instrument of discovery and advocacy for the most promising new business models in Asia.
VU Mobile won the award in mobile sector. Kaymun Amin, CEO, VU Mobile received the award.
The other sectors of the award include internet/online, marketing/ advertising/SOE, Software, entertainment & media, clean tech, professional services, cloud computing, mobile, big data/storage, computers/technology, social media, medical devices, hardware, security, consumer electronics, consulting & services, telecommunications.
In a phone interview, Kaymun Amin said VU Mobile started its operation in 2005.
“The company is working with all the six mobile carriers Grameenphone, Robi, Banglalink, Citycell, Airtel and Teletalk,” he said.
Among others, VU Mobile’s services include Shabox, text infotainment services and Club Z, a WAP subscription service.
Shahbox is a daily subscription infotainment service where a user can subscribe to any text service of choice by registration.
This service charges Tk 2 per content after first free content.
Club Z is a premium WAP content subscription service.
It offers 2 Free WAP downloads for a weekly subscription charge of Tk 15.
Subscriber also gets a free content during registration.
ClubZ subscribers can choose their two free weekly downloads from a list of various contents including wallpaper, animation, polytone, MP3, video clips, games and more.
The Shabox and Club Z services fall under the D2C (direct to customer) category.
They also have B2B (business to business) services, which include Grameenphonegame Store with Grameenphone, My Choice with Robi and STK (SIM Toolkit Menu) with Airtel.
When asked about future plans, he said they are planning for 3G networked based services, which will include more enriched multimedia services.
He also said they are working on Android and HTML 5 based applications and mobile marketing service (a business solution), which they are offering to corporate houses.
VU Mobile will be introducing various apps in partnership with smartphone and tablet vendors soon.
Amin observed that despite VAS industry’s huge potential, it lacks sufficient talented people. He said lack of awareness is the reason for this.
He said more bright-minds should come to this industry to make it grow.
“We are the leading MVAS company in Bangladesh as per revenue and subriber reach and have been awarded with the “Best Revenue Performer 2010” by Grameenphone,” said Amin.
-With The Daily Star input