Only 5-8% of the SMS advertisements are read

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What kind of messaging does SMS Country network support?
There are two type of services we deliver: one is the bulk SMS enterprises services and other is SMS advertising business. One of our products, 160by2.com has over 4.5 mn registered base and 1 mn SMSes being sent from the website everyday. In 160by2.com SMS service, we use 80 characters for one's personal information, next 80 is for advertising. We have put in contexual advertising whereby, an advertisement follows depending on the content of the SMS that precedes it. For instance, if the SMS contains 'kuch mitha ho jaye' there is a related advertisement of McDonald's or Pizza Hut with coupon code or discount coupon that follows it.

Do you think SMS advertisements can influence the customer's choice?
There is a long way to go before SMS advertising is taken positively in the country. I can say that due to the increase in spamming, people tend to ignore even the relevant messages. Trai found that open rate and read rate of SMSs have come down drastically due to spamming. Only 5-8% of the advertisements are read.

Satya Kalyan Yerramsetti CEO, SMS Country

How do you see the market in the coming times for SMS services?
SMS alerts have become an integral part of our lives. Right from roaming to operator services to airlines, missed calls, banking services, people rely heavily on SMSs. Each sender becomes the endorser or the brand ambassador of the service. We aim at reaching 350 mn people across the country.

What are your plans on the revenue front?
Right now mobile advertising is worth Rs 50 crore. We are expecting to take around 2-3% of this in the coming times. m-Commerce and mobile business is actually helping India to increase its GDP. We are looking at increasing our target base. Our main revenue generators are advertisers. Our aim is to increase our markets not the products. As of now 160by2.com is an Internet to mobile service therefore, there are limitations. But when we will become a mobile to mobile service, the market dynamics will change.

What are the other areas that you are focusing on?
Visual rich applications are other areas that we are trying to explore so that text messages can be accompanied by a visual attachment. Recently, we launched first of its kind free international SMS service through mobile phones. It triggered 10,000 downloads in the first hour of its launch and a month after it has triggered 1,17,760 downloads. This service is available to mobile phones with Internet connectivity across India, UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Archana Singh
archanasi@cybermedia.co.in