Now that Saavn, provider of Bollywood and Indian digital entertainment, has inked a deal with Sprint, it is on-deck with the top five carriers in the U.S.

As the largest digital distributor of Bollywood content globally, Saavn owns the digital rights to hundreds of movies, more than 250,000 music tracks, 20,000 music videos and 10,000 ringtones. Saavn programs, packages and distributes its exclusive catalogue and new Bollywood releases to more than 75 global media companies, including Time Warner Cable, Cablevision/Optimum, Cox Communications, NetFlix, Amazon, emusic, Rhapsody, YouTube and Apple's iTunes.

"We work with the carriers to help market the Bollywood content to an audience that might be interested in it," said Anjali Jindal, Los Angeles-based vice president of products for Saavn. "A big part of our mobile strategy is to work directly with carriers to push the Bollywood category in their main menu navigation screen so it's easy to find.

"We serve as their marketing team, because they're not sure how to reach out to these consumers, what TV channels to place media buys on, and in doing so we tie in multiple screens -- online, TV and mobile," she said.

Saavn is a joint venture of [212]MEDIA and Hungama Mobile, and the company has offices in Mumbai, London, New York, Los Angeles and Toronto.

Saavn has a branded mobile Web store. The company offers gift subscriptions to its mobile content service, as well as voting, polling, trivia and alerts via SMS.

Consumers can become members of Saavn's Bollywood Mobile Club for $4.99 per month, or they can make a single purchase for $0.99.

Sprint will soon offer full-length music tracks from Saavn. Saavn's Bollywood ringtones and wallpapers are available from T-Mobile USA and Alltel Wireless, as well as via the AT&T Media Mall.

Verizon Wireless subscribers can access Saavn ringtones, ringback tones and wallpapers by downloading VZW Tones Deluxe from Get It Now. In addition, V Cast subscribers can get Saavn full-length music videos and trailers, either streaming or via download.

To get the word out about its Bollywood offering, Verizon Wireless partnered with Saavn on the Bollypop campaign, the first-ever online Bollywood dance contest.

The prize was a trip to India and a chance to dance in a Bollywood film.

Consumers were invited to upload videos of themselves dancing to Bollywood songs and to vote for their favorite entries.

Combining elements of reality TV with social networking, Bollypop built a community around the Verizon brand.

The use of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and a custom widget helped the campaign go viral.

Verizon Wireless extended the contest deadline more than a month due to popular demand. Bollypop attracted 10,000 registered users, 300,000 page views, 400 video entries and 6 million total impressions.

The winners, Shivani Thakker and Sapna Rohra of Los Angeles, were flown to Mumbai to participate in the filming of 5678?Dance starring Shahid Kapoor.

Saavn targets a tech-savvy, affluent demographic ranging from 13 to 54.

Its users' average household income is $70,000, with $90 billion in purchasing power. The company claims that 10 percent of all U.S. millionaires consume Saavn content. Sixty-four percent of Saavn consumers hold college degree, and 98 percent use mobile phones.

The South Asian/Indian-American community is a little under 5 million in the U.S., but when you combine all the places Bollywood is screened -- 127 different countries -- the audience is really 25 million people, according to Saavn.

"The success of Slumdog Millionaire has really expanded our target market and helped Bollywood cross over to the mainstream as well," Ms. Jindal said. "We own 80 percent of music coming out of India right now.

"We add a call out during music videos aired on TV, ?Text in this keyword to this short code to get the link to download ringtones' or directing to them to a specific carrier or to something of our own off-deck," she said.

Saavn is also working on an iPhone application, which the company plans to release in the next few weeks.

"We're excited about that -- we're planning to fill it with pre-programmed music playlists, radio stations, on-demand music videos and live streaming Bollywood events," Ms. Jindal said.