Kingfisher and ZipDial launch world’s first mobile game based on missed calls

BANGALORE, INDIA: With two back-to-back cricketing events, the cricket fever in India has been at all time high. Kingfisher, India’s most popular beverage brand, has called upon ZipDial to launch Book Cricket through missed calls. The game is developed and promoted by ZipDial, a Bangalore-based technology startup that has patented various marketing and engagement services around the simplicity of dialing numbers or ZipDialling.

Book Cricket is a popular game that most Indians play as kids. The players take turns to flip pages of a book and depending on the page number you score runs, or get out. ZipDial has enabled the same game on mobile where the page flipping is replaced with ZipDialling. The game can be played by ZipDialling 080 300 500 77, toll-free.

Within the first 24 hours of launch the Kingfisher Book Cricket on ZipDial was played by 2811 unique users, out of which over 60 percent played again the same day. From there on the game’s popularity has grown virally through word of mouth. At the time of reporting the Kingfisher Book Cricket on ZipDial was played a total of 84,931 times in about 15 days.

This rate of adoption is nearly kept up with Kingfisher’s Facebook fan page which has averaged approximately 1,500 new fans per day since launch. With a toll-free and simple experience like ZipDialing, it is possible for adoption to grow much faster than on the web.

“This cricket season, Kingfisher brings the Good Times to all of India, whether or not they are connected online, and ZipDial is the ideal way to allow all of our customers to experience the Good Times and celebrate cricket in a way that is toll-free and as simple as dialing,” said Samar Sheikhawat, senior VP of Marketing for United Breweries Ltd. “We have been very happy with the participation from customers and the rate of growth of Kingfisher ZipDial Book Cricket.”

Valerie Rozycki, CEO of ZipDial, said: “We are excited to see the results and more happy about the fact that we could add value to Kingfisher’s campaigns. The fact that ZipDial works for any consumer today on an handset and any operator while being toll-free makes it ubiquitous. A 100 percent of Indian mobile audience can participate in interactive brand campaigns through ZipDialing.”