Do-It-Yourself RFID Service Tikitag Launches In India; The Market, The Timing?

Tikitag, a service that enables the launching of online applications by touching a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) or (NFC) device like a cellphone to an item tagged with an RFID Chip, has launched in India. The Belgian company is backed by Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, and is fairly unique in what they’re trying to do:

How it works
What’s interesting about Tikitag is that it is a do-it-yourself RFID kit: you don’t need a massive infrastructure deployment. The startup kit costs around $49.95 (we’re not sure if there will be a markup/import duty in case of India), and includes a reader which may be attached to a computer and 10 RFID tags to stick to devices. So you just need to swipe the tag over the reader (or the other way around) to launch one of the many applications like a GMail login, System Shut Down, Business Card (possibly competing with QR Codes at some level).

The Tikitag service is fairly new - the open beta was launched as recently as October 2008, and they probably are eying India because, well, of the mobile phone market that it is made out to be. Tikitag’s advantage lies if the fact that it is interoperable, and can be used (apparently) with any NFC or RFID reader. But that is where the problem lies:

The Market, The Timing
There just aren’t enough NFC/RFID readers in India, so the possiblities for Tikitag are limited until a handset manufacturer installs it, and a retail infrastructure is deployed. Adding an NFC chip to a handset increases the cost of the handset, so they haven’t been too kean on it.

Apart from this, the deployment of RFID chips at a consumer level is minimal, except perhaps the Delhi Metro travel card, and one cant use that to view content on the mobile phone. It will also be quite an issue to educate consumers about the possibilities of using Tikitag: one would need to be fairly tech savvy to buy something like this. At a $50 price point, the mass market just isn’t there. Tikitag has entered India at least 3 years too early…Near Field Communication in India doesn’t appear to be too near.

On Bookmyshow’s Airtel Partnership

Ticketing company Bookmyshow.com will offer Airtel subscribers across India access to tickets for movies, concerts, events, plays and sport events via a mobile application, Bharti Airtel’s on-deck WAP portal Airtel Live (http://live.airtelworld.com), and voice call at 54321-91, which gets redirected to the Bookmyshow call center for tele-booking. The price for telebooking isn’t mentioned in the release, but customers are going to be in for a rude shock if they’re charged standard voice portal rates (Rs. 6/min) for dialling 54321-91.

But why does Bookmyshow need to partner with Airtel? Does the direct to consumer model not work for Mobile Ticketing? Partering with the mobile operator gives the company the opportunity to reach out to a larger customer base. Mobile ticketing has been piloted in the past - by PVR Cinemas and Fame Adlabs, but we really haven’t heard of them after their launch; I don’t think they’ve achieved any kind of scale. I had tried out the PVR application two years ago (it’s been that long. 

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Social Networking App RockeTalk To Be Pre-Loaded On LG Handsets

RockeTalk, a mobile application, has inked a deal with LG Electronics to pre-load the app on their KT610 (Rs. 14,990) and KF750 (Rs. 18,990) mobile phones. The pre-loaded handsets are already available in India, and as per the deal, the LG will preload the app on other handset models throughout 2008 and 2009. However, by the looks of it, the phone with the pre-loaded app was launched last month.

RockeTalk was founded in November 2004 Rajiv Kumar, who had previously co-founded bluetooth company Widcomm (subsequently bought by Broadcom), and raised $7.1 million in funding in 2007 from iSherpa Ventures, EDF Ventures and Mission Ventures. Jim Greiner, former SVP and general manager of MapQuest came on board as CEO.

The latest version of RockeTalk integrates Instant messengers - Yahoo, Google Talk, MSN, AOL, ICQ, apart from making mobile downloads like ringtones, wallpapers, themes, games and other content available. What’s perhaps a little tricky, is that RockeTalk allows users to create their own galleries, share content and also upload content to sites like YouTube. RockeTalk’s public galleries can be a rather risky - India doesn’t have a safe harbor law, and as a platform, RockeTalk may be held accountable for the content its users upload. I checked a few pages of their Bollywood gallery (which took almost 30 seconds to load a single page with six thumbnails), and…there were no Bollywood images, whatsoever.

At the same time, I really do like how simple it is to upload content - both images, and a voice recording, with the application initializing the camera and the voice recorder.

Another IM app which quite a few people I know use in India is Fring.

Rediff’s Open Platform Initiative Sociali Goes Live; Only 11 Apps?

Rediff has gone live with applications on their video sharing platform iShare, just in time for the announcement of their second quarter earnings results. What’s rather odd is that they appear to have gone live with only 3 applications so far:
– Qwiz (160 users)
– Dedicate A Song (516 users)
– OMG It’s SRK (Oh My God, It’s Shah Rukh Khan) (76 users)

Take a look at 3 applications around this clip

Only 11 Apps In 3 Months?
Rediff had created a separate social network Social, as a “sandbox” for application developers to test their apps. I logged in, only to find a list of just 11 apps, three of which we’ve mentioned above. The rest:

– Groups (create groups, 11 users)
– Rocks Papers Scissors (133 users)
– Gifts (gifts for friends, 162 users)
– ulaT-palaT ke joRo (Word Game, 47 users)
– aTuniTu joDinchu (Word Game, 12 users)
– tAvi tAvi joDicer (Word Game, 14 users)
– ulaToon-palaToon joDA (Word Game, 28 users)
– Events (manage your events, 22 users)

(Screencap of apps page)

So what’s going on with Rediff? Remember that in the last earnings conference call, Rediff CEO Ajit Balakrishnan had said that “Our platform is such that almost every 10 days to two weeks, you’re going to see new verticals open.” An entire quarter later, it’s just iShare, and just 11 applications. Have there been some technical glitches, is there simply no developer interest, are there not enough application developers in the world, or is there something in the terms and conditions that developers don’t agree with?

Perhaps, it’s just that applications going live and spreading will attract more developers. In that case, the entire success of the developer platform depends on the update.

Related:
– Sociali: Rediff’s Social Network, Or Just A Developer Sandbox?
– Rediff Earnings Call With Ajit Balakrishnan: Why Rediff Opened Its API
– Rediff To Open Up Its API; Launching Developer Platform Based On Facebook Markup Language, OpenSocial