By JIM FREDERICK
Posted Sunday, June 29, 2003; 14.08BST
As a female executive in the men's club of Japanese business, Yoshimi Ogawa has to watch her step. She can't, for example, cry in front of associates. "You can never use something that would be seen as a woman's weapon," says Ogawa. Fortunately for her company, Tokyo-based Index Corp., she has not completely abandoned her female intuition. Five years ago, Index was struggling; the website- design firm's founders were dipping into their personal savings just to make the payroll. Index thought salvation might be found in a different line of work — collaborating with cellular giant NTT DoCoMo, which was developing Internet-enabled mobile phones and needed partners to provide new content and services. Ogawa, 37, focused on the one subject she knew mattered most to the young women who were — and still are — Japan's heaviest cell phone users. "What are university girls most interested in?" she asks in her Tokyo office. "Love."
Ogawa, Index's president, created the God of Love, the mobile data equivalent of a women's magazine — an ever-mutating mix of horoscopes, advice columns and multiple-choice interactive questionnaires aimed at unlocking your "Love Style" or "Tendency to Cheat."
Launched in February 1999, the God of Love started slowly but grew to be a smash hit, now attracting more than 350,000 subscribers at $1.45 per month. Index now provides a wide range of phone-delivered content to some 7 million users. Last year, Index made profits of $9 million on revenues of $85 million.
A crisp, efficient manager who holds a law degree, Ogawa is matter-of-fact about the company's success. Her first rule of product development? "I always ask myself if I would use it." New projects include online perfume stores and a home-security system that automatically calls owners' cell phones in case of a fire or break-in. "Everything is changing so fast," she says. "We have no idea what Index will be selling three years from now." Something for the ladies, certainly.
Reported by Hanna Kite/Tokyo
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