Virgin Group founder Richard Branson climbed the Hilton Towers in Mumbai yesterday to announce that Virgin Mobile has launched in India as a franchise of Tata Teleservices. The company's Indian slogan: "Think out of the box."

"Stunt-loving Virgin chairman Sir Richard Branson was in Mumbai Sunday to jump from the 20th floor of the Hilton Towers hotel (with the aid of wires, unfortunately) to unveil the logo of Virgin Mobile India, which will operate under a revenue-sharing deal with Tata Teleservices," writes Unstrung's Nicole Willing.

"TTSL will sell the Virgin Mobile brand and its services in the country, and will pay a royalty for every customer it gets," according to Rediff. "The CDMA major will launch the services initially across 50 cities... and will cover over 1,000 cities by the end of the year."

"Virgin's team of 250 researchers spent nearly nine months studying their target audience," writes BusinessWeek's Manjeet Kripalani. "They discovered that Indian parents take away their children's cell phones at night and read the text messages they send or receive - something kids hate. Virgin's value-added service is offering a password-protected folder to the young so parents cannot read their messages. Great for the kids, too bad for the parents..."

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