160by2.com plans Ads even on
missed calls
G. Ram Mohan
Jun 07, 2010
Sending an SMS to your near and dear ones has become
so cool and a fad of sorts with the Gen X increasingly banking on the free
service providers. With Andhra Pradesh being one of the most internet savvy
states, it is no wonder that city-based service providers of free SMS have
turned into the most successful ventures in the country.
www.160by2.com, a city-based free SMS provider owned by SMSCountry Networks Pvt. Ltd., figures in the list of the most successful ventures in this segment. Therefore, it is not surprising that a casual search on Google for free SMS service providers within the country and internationally throws up links to the company.
The company recently increased the character count that can be sent by users from 80 to 140 in line with its user base of youth who go gaga over Twitter and Facebook and still want more and are never tired of them.
Sensing the growing number of smart phone users in the country, the company recently developed a free-to-download mobile application that brings in a new dimension to SMSing and backup storage, as users of the service can use the mobile’s native phone book contacts for sending a message.
The application can be downloaded from http://m.160by2.com/app on the mobile phone, once installed users can register and start sending messages. The 250KB easy-to-download application runs on mobile phones with Symbian 60 third edition operating system.
In an exclusive interview given to www.andhrabusiness.com, Satya Kalyan Yerramsetti, CEO, SMSCountry Networks Pvt. Ltd. delved into the various aspects of the company.
Excerpts from the interview:
What is the current number of users registered on your site? How are you promoting the site?
Our current user base is 8.1 million. Our promotion is mostly by word-of-mouth by our users. We, in fact, sponsor cultural and annual events in colleges targeting our user base and draw maximum mileage out of them.
What was the increase in percentage terms in sending SMS by users during Christmas and the New Year?
There was around 30 per cent rise in the number of users during Christmas and New Year this year.
Are you planning to roll out free SMS services to US where the premium users could come from, increasing the scope for premium product advertisements which can turn into more revenue?
e-mails are more in vogue and are more in use by Indians in the United States. Unlike India and many other countries, receivers of SMS are charged in the US. So, we promote sending SMS by our users in US to India. Policies there are also veering around to sending them free of cost and could happen soon.
You recently increased the number of characters users can send from 80 to 140. Has it resulted in increasing your user base? Are you planning any further improvements on the site?
The user base of the company has started increasing after the increase in character count. Users who had accounts with other service providers along with ours are now relying on us more. We want to make 160by2.com a social networking site of sorts. People had networked even before Facebook and Twitter entered into picture through phones. This is an untapped segment which we want to use now. Maybe, we can make the phone numbers and details among friends accessible to one another to help them network.
Currently, receivers of SMS do not know anything about the receivers of the same SMS sent to multiple mobiles. We will enable them to know the others on the network bringing the concept of Twitter into it and like Facebook allow people to follow others who send interesting SMS which keep doing the rounds there after. The facility will be launched shortly and is currently at the trial stage.
Will this not affect your advertisers as their message gets shorter? How are you addressing this dicey situation?
We do not place advertisements on every SMS sent. They are placed depending on the keyword used in the message for example an SMS with coffee as a word could have an advertisement from Barista which helps in increasing the recall value for the company. Any message consisting of the word 'congratulations' in it can have Cadbury advertisement and a positive message could promote Britannia GoodDay and the word hungry could be followed with Dominos message.
We have found that not all users use even the 80 characters limit we placed on them earlier. Most messages were found to be even shorter. We take different versions of advertisement from companies and place them, depending on the message being sent.
Are you planning to further expand your company into other services? What is your current headcount? How much investment was pumped into the venture before you broke even?
Our current headcount is 315 and have offices across the country at 12 locations. Our headquarters is in Hyderabad, where all the technical work is done. In the other centres, we only have our marketing teams. We invested nearly Rs 4 crore before we could break even.
What is your revenue model?
All brands and media planning agencies are our potential clients. We have carried advertisements with their offers from the likes of Jet Airways, Kingfisher during the off season and mainly during the downturn. Bakery chains like Mongini's cakes, which has anywhere between 200 to 300 outlets in Mumbai, Bhubaneshwar and other places, uses our services. We have arrangements with IRCTC of Indian Railways. Any query about railway services to 139 through their IVRS (interactive voice response system) through mobile will get an SMS from us.
Placing advertisements in missed call alerts and messages received after recharging mobile phones are running in the pilot stage and will be launched soon. We place our advertisements basing on the profile of the customer.
We work with ad networks like Komli media, Admagnet, Tyroo among others. They pay us on the basis of CPM (cost per thousand impressions) that is the number of views of the page. Brand promotion is done through us. We have an in-house sales team with 200 guys.
How do you ensure that your SMS service is not used to send bulk messages for commercial use? Do you have a facility for those who want to pay and avail this service from you?
If a user sends messages to more than 10 users at a time, we get a flag, that is, we are alerted. Users are barred from sending more than 500 messages per day. For users who want to use our bulk messages service, we provide them tools and technology on the SaaS (software as a service) model. But, they are not sent via 160by2.com facilities.
What is the my Ads option all about? Is it to enable your users post ads directly free of cost? How will this service be of use to 160by2.com?
The 'My Ads' option, which is offered free of cost, is like the classified advertisement in a newspaper. Users can send an SMS with their own advertisements for purposes like selling a house, plot, or an article. This is an option given to drive more users into the site.
What is the arrangement between you and the mobile companies? They normally collect termination charges from other mobile companies.
We have arrangements with mobile companies including the new players in the realm. We buy the facility in bulk from them to deliver SMSs. The differential between what we pay to the mobile operators and what we get from advertisers is what is revenue for us.
Any plan to launch voice mail services? And what about launching the facility of sending SMS in vernacular languages?
We are discussing and researching launch of these facilities. We are discussing with a company, Matro Maharshi, to outsource the facility of sending SMS in vernacular languages. The trend of sending voice SMS was evident during elections. We are planning to go for it in future. Market is not yet ready for their launch, so we are keeping our fingers crossed. To launch them, we need to know how many are chatting and searching in local languages. Only then, we can zero in on whether to go ahead or not.
Do you have a presence in any other business?
One of our other ventures is www.ygoy.com. It is a portal with tips on health and lifestyle related ailments with sub websites on nail care, arthritis and home remedies. We give updates on the remedies frequently. They are written by our in-house team of 35 members who are persons with psychology and other backgrounds, but not doctors as such.
We have some writers also from China, Finland, Indonesia and three from the US. It has crossed the breakeven stage long back and relies entirely on Google advertisements. The target audience are those in the West, while 85 per cent are from US the rest are from Europe.
Tell us about yourself and how you zeroed-in on starting this venture?
I am a B.Tech from Vasavi College of Engineering, Hyderabad. I then went on to do my MBA from the University of Western Sydney in Sydney, Australia. Mr Raju, co-founder of the venture and currently Director of technology of the company was with a company which provided SMS services to Tata Cellular. He goaded me into starting this venture and currently holds a stake in it.
www.160by2.com, a city-based free SMS provider owned by SMSCountry Networks Pvt. Ltd., figures in the list of the most successful ventures in this segment. Therefore, it is not surprising that a casual search on Google for free SMS service providers within the country and internationally throws up links to the company.
The company recently increased the character count that can be sent by users from 80 to 140 in line with its user base of youth who go gaga over Twitter and Facebook and still want more and are never tired of them.
Sensing the growing number of smart phone users in the country, the company recently developed a free-to-download mobile application that brings in a new dimension to SMSing and backup storage, as users of the service can use the mobile’s native phone book contacts for sending a message.
The application can be downloaded from http://m.160by2.com/app on the mobile phone, once installed users can register and start sending messages. The 250KB easy-to-download application runs on mobile phones with Symbian 60 third edition operating system.
In an exclusive interview given to www.andhrabusiness.com, Satya Kalyan Yerramsetti, CEO, SMSCountry Networks Pvt. Ltd. delved into the various aspects of the company.
Excerpts from the interview:
What is the current number of users registered on your site? How are you promoting the site?
Our current user base is 8.1 million. Our promotion is mostly by word-of-mouth by our users. We, in fact, sponsor cultural and annual events in colleges targeting our user base and draw maximum mileage out of them.
What was the increase in percentage terms in sending SMS by users during Christmas and the New Year?
There was around 30 per cent rise in the number of users during Christmas and New Year this year.
Are you planning to roll out free SMS services to US where the premium users could come from, increasing the scope for premium product advertisements which can turn into more revenue?
e-mails are more in vogue and are more in use by Indians in the United States. Unlike India and many other countries, receivers of SMS are charged in the US. So, we promote sending SMS by our users in US to India. Policies there are also veering around to sending them free of cost and could happen soon.
You recently increased the number of characters users can send from 80 to 140. Has it resulted in increasing your user base? Are you planning any further improvements on the site?
The user base of the company has started increasing after the increase in character count. Users who had accounts with other service providers along with ours are now relying on us more. We want to make 160by2.com a social networking site of sorts. People had networked even before Facebook and Twitter entered into picture through phones. This is an untapped segment which we want to use now. Maybe, we can make the phone numbers and details among friends accessible to one another to help them network.
Currently, receivers of SMS do not know anything about the receivers of the same SMS sent to multiple mobiles. We will enable them to know the others on the network bringing the concept of Twitter into it and like Facebook allow people to follow others who send interesting SMS which keep doing the rounds there after. The facility will be launched shortly and is currently at the trial stage.
Will this not affect your advertisers as their message gets shorter? How are you addressing this dicey situation?
We do not place advertisements on every SMS sent. They are placed depending on the keyword used in the message for example an SMS with coffee as a word could have an advertisement from Barista which helps in increasing the recall value for the company. Any message consisting of the word 'congratulations' in it can have Cadbury advertisement and a positive message could promote Britannia GoodDay and the word hungry could be followed with Dominos message.
We have found that not all users use even the 80 characters limit we placed on them earlier. Most messages were found to be even shorter. We take different versions of advertisement from companies and place them, depending on the message being sent.
Are you planning to further expand your company into other services? What is your current headcount? How much investment was pumped into the venture before you broke even?
Our current headcount is 315 and have offices across the country at 12 locations. Our headquarters is in Hyderabad, where all the technical work is done. In the other centres, we only have our marketing teams. We invested nearly Rs 4 crore before we could break even.
What is your revenue model?
All brands and media planning agencies are our potential clients. We have carried advertisements with their offers from the likes of Jet Airways, Kingfisher during the off season and mainly during the downturn. Bakery chains like Mongini's cakes, which has anywhere between 200 to 300 outlets in Mumbai, Bhubaneshwar and other places, uses our services. We have arrangements with IRCTC of Indian Railways. Any query about railway services to 139 through their IVRS (interactive voice response system) through mobile will get an SMS from us.
Placing advertisements in missed call alerts and messages received after recharging mobile phones are running in the pilot stage and will be launched soon. We place our advertisements basing on the profile of the customer.
We work with ad networks like Komli media, Admagnet, Tyroo among others. They pay us on the basis of CPM (cost per thousand impressions) that is the number of views of the page. Brand promotion is done through us. We have an in-house sales team with 200 guys.
How do you ensure that your SMS service is not used to send bulk messages for commercial use? Do you have a facility for those who want to pay and avail this service from you?
If a user sends messages to more than 10 users at a time, we get a flag, that is, we are alerted. Users are barred from sending more than 500 messages per day. For users who want to use our bulk messages service, we provide them tools and technology on the SaaS (software as a service) model. But, they are not sent via 160by2.com facilities.
What is the my Ads option all about? Is it to enable your users post ads directly free of cost? How will this service be of use to 160by2.com?
The 'My Ads' option, which is offered free of cost, is like the classified advertisement in a newspaper. Users can send an SMS with their own advertisements for purposes like selling a house, plot, or an article. This is an option given to drive more users into the site.
What is the arrangement between you and the mobile companies? They normally collect termination charges from other mobile companies.
We have arrangements with mobile companies including the new players in the realm. We buy the facility in bulk from them to deliver SMSs. The differential between what we pay to the mobile operators and what we get from advertisers is what is revenue for us.
Any plan to launch voice mail services? And what about launching the facility of sending SMS in vernacular languages?
We are discussing and researching launch of these facilities. We are discussing with a company, Matro Maharshi, to outsource the facility of sending SMS in vernacular languages. The trend of sending voice SMS was evident during elections. We are planning to go for it in future. Market is not yet ready for their launch, so we are keeping our fingers crossed. To launch them, we need to know how many are chatting and searching in local languages. Only then, we can zero in on whether to go ahead or not.
Do you have a presence in any other business?
One of our other ventures is www.ygoy.com. It is a portal with tips on health and lifestyle related ailments with sub websites on nail care, arthritis and home remedies. We give updates on the remedies frequently. They are written by our in-house team of 35 members who are persons with psychology and other backgrounds, but not doctors as such.
We have some writers also from China, Finland, Indonesia and three from the US. It has crossed the breakeven stage long back and relies entirely on Google advertisements. The target audience are those in the West, while 85 per cent are from US the rest are from Europe.
Tell us about yourself and how you zeroed-in on starting this venture?
I am a B.Tech from Vasavi College of Engineering, Hyderabad. I then went on to do my MBA from the University of Western Sydney in Sydney, Australia. Mr Raju, co-founder of the venture and currently Director of technology of the company was with a company which provided SMS services to Tata Cellular. He goaded me into starting this venture and currently holds a stake in it.
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