Innoz Technologies - Enriching Mobile Experience

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“We find a lot of traction for services such as 55444 and a lot of customers who have used these services turn out to be repeat users. We have seen our revenues growing consistently since the launch of the service,” said a Vodafone India spokesperson.

Today Innoz has evolved as a platform company and not merely an information provider. Many Internet companies are on board with Innoz’s technology as it looks to bring their respective services to the unconnected masses – this includes Wikipedia, Twitter, Foursquare, Microsoft Bing and Google. Through its 55444.in portal, Innoz targets developers to build SMS-based applications for just about anything, and there is more than 10,000 of such apps to date. The developer ecosystem is fostered through hackathons, where it showcases the efforts of developers from around the world.

Products

SMSGyan / 55444

The SMSgyan is push back service where people can send their any query to 55444 and can get instant answers on their mobile phone (Exhibit 1 – how 55444 works). The query can be anything, from job info to fashion info or general knowledge or just word meanings. The revenue model is straight-forward. One can opt either for the pay-as-you-go option where each SMS costs Rs 1, or opt for a Rs 30 package for a month with unlimited SMSs. 70% of this is shared with service providers. 80% of Innoz’s revenues come from telecom operators through revenue share agreements.

Unlike some other search services it does not send links. It provide the information directly. It is trending towards artificial intelligence for your queries. SMSGYAN has unique user value- In a situation where you are stuck with no GPRS/EDGE connectivity, or you have a phone which doesn’t have a (good?) web browser, SMSGYAN holds much promise in getting you the information you need. SMSGYAN can be used in any basic phone model. All your phone need is just an SMS facility. SMSGYAN is built for the community. Customer fit in from top to bottom of the pyramid. If there’s one thing a user will never mind doing with a phone, it is SMS. Complimenting SMSGYAN, they built CellNXT, a leading SMS/Voice gateway service provider, delivering to over 200 corporates and 550 SME’s all-around India

55444 sees a daily traffic of 1 million search queries and 3.5 million subscribers. Nearly 60 per cent its revenues come from Tier II and Tier III cities. The targets is Rural India which is still dominated by basic phones with no GPRS/internet connectivity.

55444.in Platform for SMS Apps and Brownie OS

Through its 55444.in portal, Innoz targets developers to build SMS-based applications for just about anything, and there is more than 10,000 of such apps to date. The platform, 55444.in is a business development tool for the company. In 2012, Innoz decided to open up the 55444 platform to the outside world, in simpler words now anyone can have their own keyword starting with # on 55444.The 55444.in platform is used by other companies to consume the internet while still offline. When a user sends an SMS to 55444 for the company’s app, the[a] request is redirected to the URL specified while adding the app to the 55444.in app store, with the options sent in the SMS. The background server processes the request and send the response back as an XML or HTML file. For using Apps created by third party developers the user will be charged at Rs.1 per query unless the app is specified free. The platform not only gives revenues and recognition to Innoz but also to the developers as they will get a revenue share up to 50 percent per hit. Innoz has also created its own ‘Brownie’ operating system – for dumb phones. (Exhibit 2 – Technology partners using 55444.in platform)

Since, SMS-based applications needs more popularity, the company organized a 36-hour Hackathon, where about 150 technologists wrote codes for various apps.A Hackathon is an intensive marathon of brainstorming and programming, where software developers and designers collaborate to create new tools for solving a set of problems.

Quest

Quest is a location based p2p search engine for smartphones. It enables mobile phone users to ask a question via a text message and Android app, post which other users can reply to the same. The app is available on Android as of now; an iOS app is also in the pipeline. Quest also features a gamification model where users get a Karma point for every question and answer.

The Way Ahead

SMS market out here is huge, 904 million mobile users with only 79 million are using mobile internet. Even if we see the telecom regulations like 200 SMS cap and all, the pull market (where people will get the message only when they ask for it) has no harm, and this market opportunity gives different and new career opportunities to people passionate about this field.

Innoz Aims to handle 10 million queries per day by 2015 with 1 million new users joining every day.It also plans to widen its reach to other emerging markets such as South Africa, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Nepal, West Asia and other countries and SAARC nations. Through Mobile advertisement, Innoz plans to push advertisements based on user behavior. It is also in talks with internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter to offer services on their offline platforms.

Exhibit 1

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Exhibit 2

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