Google Gets Into The Push SMS Business In India, Takes On MyToday, SMS Gupshup

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Google is making a habit of entering market segments in India that others have spent time and effort and money evangelizing: they did that to local language search and local business listings search, and now are trying to grab a piece of the Push SMS subscription pie. Via an email from a kind reader, we were informed about the launch of Google SMS Channels. Digital Inspiration had also written about it.

At the time of posting this, there are already 242 channels live on the site, many of them user created. As a publisher, or a sender, it’s a fairly simple process for creating an alert - just choose an available keyword, verify your mobile number, add an RSS feed as a content source, and you’re good to go.

The numbers, the numbers, the numbers
As we’ve mentioned earlier, the Push SMS business suffers from a problem of plenty - the more the number of users, the higher the cost. We’ve heard that bulk SMS rates have been coming down, and though none of the publishers or bulk SMS providers have confirmed this, we’re told that they’re now lower than Rs. 0.05 per SMS, or around $0.00108 (at Rs. 46.31 to the dollar).

If Google were to send as many as 10 million SMS per day, it amounts to a cost of Rs. 18.25 crores per year, which at the current conversaion rate is around $3.96 million. If the Rupee strengthens, then at around Rs. 40 to the dollar, it is around $4.56 million.

Do note that MyToday and SMS Gupshup claim that they’re sending more than 10 million SMS’ per day.

The monetization?
MyToday and SMS GupShup have tried to monetize the service with advertising. Netcore (MyToday) MD Rajesh Jain, in particular, has been evangelizing mobile marketing quite aggressively over the past couple of months, at several conferences. He’s coined a phrase called “Invertising”, or Invited Advertising. According to his calculartions, the Mobile Marketing business can be Rs. 1000 crores (around $215 Million) per year in 2 years - with Rs. 600 crores ($130 Million) from Invertising, Rs. 300 crores ($65 Million) from SMS advertising and Rs. 100 crores ($20 Million) from WAP advertising. Of course, there are a number of assumptions involved with the estimation:

Click on the image for an expanded view, or take a look at his presentation here (PDF). What I’d like to know is - what are the current CPM and fill rates for MyToday and GupShup?

The Search-Alert Opportunity
Mobile content and search startup Zook has already implemented alerts around their local search results. Sameer Shisodia, founder of Zook informs us that they are enabling SMS alerts related to local business search results. For example: for a query “Shoes Deals”, one  can select a city (Bangalore), and set up alerts for those. Google provides a similar service with RSS feeds for Google News Search results; They can monetize by incorporating SMS alerts for local business search, like Zook. However, Zook doesn’t appear to have an option for publishers.

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Related:
– Analysis of the Cost of Push SMS Services

@MoMo Mumbai: Things To Do, Short Codes, Safe Harbor, Bikini Content

What Needs To Be Done
– Single Point Access: Arvind Rao, CEO of OnMobile emphasised the need for a single point window for short codes, so that the short code is operational within 30 days on all operators; a central point for getting connectivity and access for off-deck services
– A central independent auditor for content downloads
– It’s important to get the DOT to remove the 15 percent tax on mobile VAS; it will kill the micro-payments sector

Short Code Issues
Both Rao and Viren Popli, SVP & Head of Mobile Entertainment for STAR, mentioned the issues around short codes - it used to take 2 years to get a short code from BSNL at one point in time. Popli said that even when a short code is given, one still does not get connectivity - having to fly around the country (with different circle heads, I presume)- it just adds tremendous cost to a startup. Imagine what will happen when you have to deal with 20 mobile operators.

Content Issues

Quality Of Service: Popli said that those who are providing branded services are very cognizant of the quality of service. “We have a very strong third party audit for every large show - KMPG, Deloitte etc. We have published rules and regulations. If there’s a failure on the network side, we are not liable.” For the show Paanchvi Pass, they set up a call center for complaints and…”we record each and every call - in one of our data vaults we have every call we’ve recorded for KBC 1 - so we can pull it out and say that at so and so time, and so and so date, this is what you said. That’s something that we as an organization do invest in.”

On Liability, Exclusive Deals, Lottery and Bikinis, Telcos and Marketing -

(more…)

Updated: Webaroo Raises $10 Million In Funding: Report

Update: Ashish Gupta of Helion Venture Partners has, in an emailed response, told WATBlog that “we have not done any funding for Gupshup.” That, of course, doesn’t mean that the deal isn’t in process. Do note that we haven’t received a definitive statement from Webaroo, and no response yet from Helion, but we do have a copy of the mail sent to WATBlog

Original post (July 4): Mobile startup Webaroo has raised $10 Million in funding from Helion Venture Partners and Charles River Ventures, according to Pluggd.in. The report is unconfirmed, and though we’ve tried, we haven’t yet received a confirmation or a denial from the company.

About
Over the past couple of months, we’ve heard about Webaroo looking for funding. Webaroo has a couple of mobile based products - the first is an application that helps store web-pages for offline usage on desktop and mobile, with several customized “packs” of content like on Football, Delhi, Manchester United etc. The second is an SMS based social application that allows users to communicate with their subscribers via SMS - similar to a newsletter on the Internet.

Previous Round
The company had previously raised $7.5 million of $10 million in a second round of funding: investors include Cambrian Fund, Lloyd George Asian Plus Fund and HTSG.

We’ll have an update on this in the evening, so…watch this space.