India's first mobile movie portal from Vuclip

California-based mobile video service provider Vuclip today launched India’s first independent mobile movie portal — Starlight Cinema. This would offer users the option of watching shortened feature films, movie clips, songs, reviews and trailers. Movies can be downloaded on low-end feature phones as well, without the need to download any application.

Offering 9,000 movie clips in 13 Indian languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, 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 the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India issuing strict guidelines on SMS-based marketing, a release said.

 

“During the pilot testing stage, as many as two million movie-lovers visited Starlight Cinema, generating over 11 million video views in just 100 days,” said Salman Hussain, vice-president (business development) and managing director (India and West Asia), Vuclip.

Vuclip, which has so far served over five billion video views worldwide, would offer content on Starlight Cinema to providers, including UTV Motion Pictures, Reliance Entertainment, Vega, Whacked Out Media and Maa TV. The portal also provides access to trailers of recent Hollywood movies like The Adventures of Tintin, The Awakening, Hugo and Tresspass.

Hussain said the portal featured 9,000 clips from 350 popular movie titles in Hindi and other regional languages. To meet the ever-increasing demand for exclusive movie content on mobile phones, the company is working with other content providers to digitise more such clips, from as many as 8,500 movies.

“To make it more appealing to our consumers, we are also launching dedicated mobile micro-sites for various regional languages, beginning with one channel exclusively featuring south Indian movie clips, including Telugu movies such as Dookudu, Oosaravelli, Dhada, Mr Perfect, Ye Maya Chesave, as well as upcoming movies Panjaa and Sri Rama Rajyam, Tamil movies such as Aum Arivu and upcoming movies Poraali, Osthe, Mayakkam Enna, besides movie clips in Kannada and Malayalam,” he said.