(with inputs from Pulkit Sharma) The complete and utter failure of India's "Do Not Call" registry has created a nice little opportunity for Aquilonis, a Bangalore based tech firm, to market its XBLOCKR application. XBLOCKR allows its users to discreetly drop, divert or duck unwanted calls. Compatible with over 250 handsets and across platforms such as Symbian, BlackBerry and Windows, the application even simulates an error message to avoid offending the caller. It's available on Microsoft Marketplace for Windows Phone, Nokia's OVI and Airtel App Central, and priced at Rs. 349. The company claims to have 25000 users, and received 5000 downloads in the first week itself. If they are all paid users, then that works out to Rs. 8.725 million in revenue. But I'm not sure if this addresses the problem entirely: telemarketers use many numbers for making the calls. When was the last time you received two marketing calls from the same number? So while this may help some execs avoid calls from pesky journalists trying to break stories (nudge, nudge), among other use cases, I doubt it will work on a larger scale. A Suggestion How about adding a crowdsourcing model to this? A year or so ago, a company (I forget which) had showcased at Mobile Monday Delhi, the idea of crowdsourcing telemarketer names and numbers: users can submit telemarketer numbers and names, and update their mobile phone number list on an on-going basis. The idea was shot down for being impractical, but with an application…
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