Apollo online lottery awards AOR to OMS; partners with NDTV

Apollo International Ltd (AIL), part of the Rs 2,300-crore Group Apollo, has appointed Optimum Media Solutions (OMS) as the AOR for its estimated Rs 20-crore-plus online lottery business - Lottus.

We had mentioned in our previous report on the media pitch for Lottus that Lodestar, Universal McCann and Carat were in the fray for the business. Company sources say a few more agencies joined the race at a later stage. These include OMS, Zenith, Starcom and The Media Edge. For the record, the creative duties of Lottus are with FCB-Ulka.

Confirming the development, Vidisha Chatterjee, head, communications & PR, AIL, says, "We decided to partner with OMS because of the fresh, innovative ideas it presented the understanding of the market it displayed." She adds, "The online lottery business is a new category. We expect OMS to give us innovative and creative media buying solutions to reach our target group."

On its part, OMS is quite thrilled about the win. "We pitched hard," remarks Gita Ram, head, OMS, Delhi, "now the hard work begins." There are two tasks at hand. One is converting paper lottery consumers into online lottery customers, and two "…get people like you and me to play online lottery", states an upbeat Ram.

Indeed. The last 10 months have been very exciting for OMS. "We have picked up AOR worth over Rs 150 crore, and these include Yamaha, Reliance Infocomm, Grasim Industries, Dabur oral care and now the Apollo online lottery," says Sandeep Vij, president OMS.

For live announcement of the lottery draws on televisions, AIL has partnered with Prannoy Roy-promoted New Delhi Television. "There will be several draws through the day and they will be telecast both on NDTV India (the Hindi news channel) and NDTV 24X7 (the English news channel)," says Chatterjee.

While AIL has yet to announce the date of launch of Lottus, it has made its investment plans public. AIL is investing Rs 250 crore in its online lottery enterprise and hopes to clock a revenue of Rs 2,500 crore over the next three years.

Raaja Kanwar, joint managing director, Apollo International, had stated in a recent press meet, "With an investment of Rs 250 crore envisaged over the next three years, we hope to establish our lead in the online lottery business by both exploiting and expanding the market potential."

AIL has procured the licence to market Arunachal Pradesh state government lotteries, and is also bidding for licences in Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and Kerala. In the first phase, the company will set up terminals in West Bengal, the north eastern states, Kerala, Karnataka and Maharashtra. It will target the remaining 14 states where lottery is permitted in the second phase. © 2003 agencyfaqs!