Kathmandu, January 12:

Having taken the mobile phone market by storm in the last one and half years, Spice Nepal’s brand Mero Mobile is now poised to launch the next phase of expansion with a string of value added services.

The telecom player is targeting February to unravel these services that is being extended to it by its service provider based in Kazakhstan.

While CEO Dmitriy Zaika makes no bones about Mero Mobile’s aim to provide Nepali consumers all the telecom services available globally, and eventually beat Nepal Telecom in the number game, he refuses to divulge the details of the services to be launched in February or thereafter.

But according to sources, to begin with Mero Mobile plans to come up with an interactive campaign with consumers for Valentine’s Day for which it has already tied up with Kantipur Television.

The advertising campaign for VAS is likely to be launched any time soon.

“Our focus in 2007 will be on extending the mobile phone service into the arena of entertainment and information and providing state of the art services. That is where the world market is headed,” claims Zaika.

The telecom industry everywhere in the world is growing at a phenomenal pace. “We are committed to bring that pace of growth in services to Nepal and become the leaders in telecom,” he adds.

The aggressive stance of the company is evident not merely from the top management’s obsession to acquire the number one telecom player tag but from the substantial advertising budget that it has allocated. While the launch budget alone stood at Rs 10 million in 2005, the current budget for advertising, events, promotions and outdoor campaign this year is said to hover between Rs 25-30 million.

Prisma, the advertising agency for Mero Mobile, claims to have created three 40-second each commercials for its Personal Ring Back Tone (PRBT) and Multi-media Messaging Service MMS) services recently.

“We soon plan to come up with one more commercial in that category that will be created on a funny note,” says Ranjit Acharya, CEO Prisma Advertising. Unlike the “government style advertising’ of Nepal Telecom or even UTL for that matter, Mero Mobile”, points out Acharya, wants its commercial campaigns to be interactive and racy.