 "I-Pru Mobile App Allows Users To Access Transaction History")
ICICI Prudential AMC (ICICI Pru AMC) is a formidable player in the mutual fund industry with Assets Under Management (AUM) of Rs 39,208.96 crore (as of October 31, 2008) as per figures on the company’s website. The company manages about 40 discrete schemes and operates branches across 68 cities in the country.
Information technology plays a very important role in marketing at ICICI Pru AMC. IT has paved the way for digital marketing. The penetration of the Internet and mobiles is providing enterprises an additional platform to market their products apart from conventional channels like TV and Radio. “India has 300 million mobile subscribers while Internet users are also increasing by the day. ICICI Pru AMC has launched the I-Pru mobile application for its customers to access information on their transaction history via their mobile phones,” said Nipun Kaushal, VP – marketing, ICICI Pru AMC. This eliminates the need of calling the agent or even accessing the website for checking details.
The company is also planning an online promotional campaign for I-Pru. “We have also started tracking on a customer-to-customer basis to record which pages they visit frequently and the purpose of such visit,” said Kaushal.
The company’s website has registered 8,000 customers for the mobile application in the last two months.
The I-Pru mobile app offers innovative value-added services like investment calculator that calculates the potential earnings against investment in specific schemes and helps in the decision making process.
Customers cannot transact via the I-Pru mobile app; however, they can view and transact through the company’s website. The amount of online transactions via I-Pru tracker (the company’s online transaction platform) has been burgeoning rapidly. “We have processed 15,341 transactions for the current financial year so far (as on November 5, 2008), overtaking the previous year’s count of 15,235 at the same point last year. There are about 73,000 investors, who have used the I-Pru tracker at least once,” said Kaushal.
Speaking about the other online initiatives, Kaushal said that search engine optimisation and a knowledge centre that encapsulates information on all areas of mutual funds for customer orientation were in the pipeline. Optimising the search engine will place ICICI Pru’s relevant scheme along side other schemes when the user enters a particular search word on Google. The company is also planning to advertise its schemes on third party websites.
As a part of its green campaign, the company is asking customers to apply for e-statements. This initiative is jointly rolled out with the Bombay Natural History Society.