* ?Habib was very sick as a baby. He was in a hospital for months. We had no way to pay, so my husband got a job on a building site near Dubai and he sent money back to me. Now Habib?s nearly three and he?s strong again??

* ?We got married two months ago and I?m missing my husband every day. He got a job in Ghana. He says the money is good but the work is long. But I?m happy. I know he?s doing it for me, for our lives together??

* ?I got offered this job in a restaurant in New York just after my wife got pregnant. So I had to leave home. Every time I see a baby I imagine holding my little one. My heart is there, but my mind is thinking about tomorrow??

* ?My husband often calls me just before dinner to ask what I am preparing. I tell him about the sauces, even the spices I am grinding and mixing in. He says Indian food in Europe doesn?t taste as good as mine??

A million different voices. A million experiences. Bound to one need factor?a need for immediate cash.

Can one word answer a million different needs?

?Yes,? proclaims Western Union?s newest global campaign. A category leader in the ?cash to cash? money transfer business, Western Union has released its first mixed media campaign in India?first in 150 years.

The timing is apt. The inward remittance industry posted negative growth (-5%) in the last quarter (October-December) of 2008. This was a wake-up call as the Indian remittance market ranks as the largest in the world?$50 billion in 2008, as per an Aite Group (a US-based IT consultancy firm in the financial services domain) survey of money transfer organisations (MTOs) released in April 2009.

The market includes old time ?cash to cash? MTOs such as Western Union and MoneyGram, besides banks such as ICICI, SBI, HDFC etc, and a clutch of on-line entities such as remit2India, money2india and paypal.

The industry caters to the needs of dependents of migrant workers. MTOs with their traditional cash to cash model have a major base in rural areas and are mainly focused on outreach programmes. Today, with the heat of global recession on, category leader, Western Union has for the first time felt the need to spend on a multi-million dollar brand initiative, dubbed Yes!

As per the RBI report on private transfers, the third quarter of 2008 (October-December) went especially bad, when the industry posted negative growth (-5%) vis-?-vis 2007 ($10,861 million in 2007 against $10,356 million in 2008, according to RBI data on India?s Balance of Payment Developments). And the worse may not be over yet.

The Aite report forecasts that cross-border workers? remittances will fall to $368 billion by 2009, logging a 7.3% decrease over 2008. This might improve, albeit marginally in 2010, touching $374 billion (that is, a 1.5% increase over 2009), if MTOs play their cards well.

As of now, although the bank transfer mode is reported to be slower than the MTO model, banks continue to gain in market share. In addition, MTOs face stiff challenges from emerging channels such as mobile, transfers to prepaid cards, transfers from ATMs and prepaid cards. Lately, with the tightening of money laundering norms in some countries, compliance costs have shot up and price wars with banks have also begun to erode the MTOs? customer base in some countries.

All this is in sharp contrast to the early years, when Western Union grew its market share globally from 12.4% in 2005 to 16.9% in 2008 and MoneyGram grew from 2.6% to 3.9%, according to the Aite survey.

The picture is somewhat similar in India, except that besides the two lead players there are also a clutch of regional players who dominate certain corridors, such as the money transfer corridor from Middle East to India. ?They are seriously hit by the decline in the blue collar remittance,? says Avijit Nanda, president of Times of Money, that owns remit2india, a platform for bank-to-bank online transfers.

?Our competition is not with banks but with inefficient channels such as cheque payments that take days to credit,? he explains. The MTO model is also fast, but it mainly caters to the low-end of the spectrum, people who don?t have access to the banks or the internet.

?Our main business comes from tier-II and tier-III cities, where banking infrastructure is still weak,? concedes Rajesh Mehta, director, marketing, South and South East Asia, Western Union Services India.

Globally, online transfers account for less than 2% of the inward, private remittance market. Offline, India ranks as the largest recipient ($37.4 billion in 2007) closely followed by China ($36.3 billion) as per the Aite survey.

Both Mehta and Nanda fear that the slowdown may cause 10-15% shrinkage in their business, although the real picture would become clear only over the next quarter. ?My suspicion is that with the tightening of the purse, the choice of the channel would get skewed in favour of banks and online players as they charge three times less than the MTOs,? says Nanda.

Mahesh Iyer, AVP (foreign exchange), Thomas Cook India, an agent for MoneyGram, argues that the inward remittance market has not shrunk. He however concedes that it?s a very fragmented market, and it?s very difficult to arrive at the correct figures.

Incidentally, an MTO?s business model, like an FMCG business, is driven by the agent network. In India, Western Union operates a bigger distribution network through Andhra Bank, HDFC Bank, India Post, Karnataka Bank, Paul Merchants, Transcorp International etc; while MoneyGram dominates the Gulf corridor, through Airwings Services, Bharat Petroleum Corporation, The Catholic Syrian Bank, Central Bank of India, Corporation Bank etc.

Backyard customers prefer MTOs for the simplicity of their transfer model. All that you require is to fill out a ?To Send Money? form at any authorised agent location for which you would be issued a 10-digit money transfer control number (MTCN) code. The agent will collect the transfer amount plus his fee. The MTCN code along with an identity card (PAN, ration card or driving license) has to be flashed at the agent location in the home country with the filling out of a ?To Receive Money? form and the funds can be claimed. ?Today, our main competition comes from banks,? concedes Mehta, ?although the pressure is more on the receiver side than the sender side,? he adds.

Clearly, the money transfer business is not immune from recession. Going forward, it may be a lot tougher if the MTOs do not keep their eyes on the ball. ?Above all, we need to reconnect with our customers,? says Mehta. As Western Union is doing after 150 years.

The campaign is a handiwork of Publicis Hong Kong and McCann Erickson and has been released simultaneously in 200 territories that the company operates in. The crew led by well-known film director Antoine Bardou-Jacquet, photojournalist Steve McCurry and typographer David Carson, combed through Morocco, Singapore, Los Angeles, Cape Town and India in search of customers whose lives have been touched and transformed by Western Union.

The result? A touching mosaic of credible faces and voices that capture the aspirations of a disparate world, strung together by a common need factor. It has been dubbed into 40 languages, including 10 Indian languages.

?We shot the film in three weeks. The scale wasn?t huge, but the challenge was to convincingly convey the Indian milieu,? says Parvathy Nair, group business director for McCann Erickson. She doesn?t say this, but the challenge is also to keep hopes afloat in a depressed economy.