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Innoz Technologies: the powerhouse of innovation
Article in Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies · April 2015 DOI: 10.1108/EEMCS-09-2014-0207
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Roma Puri and Amit Kumar
Roma Puri and Amit Early beginnings Kumar are both Assistant Professors based at IILM Deepak Ravindran and a group of friends were enjoying the start of a new day in 2008 on Graduate School of the grounds of an engineering college in southern India on a pleasant morning. Ravindran Management, Gautam was waiting to go back home after attending lectures and his attention was distracted by Budha Nagar, a girl walking by; he wanted to get the girl’s attention and he asked his friends, “What are Uttar Pradesh, India. the best ways to impress a girl?”. His friends suggested that he Google the question to find out. Ravindran wondered if could get an immediate answer to his question, but his mobile phone did not have an Internet connection. As a young graduate, Ravindran had a dream to do something, but he was not sure exactly what it was. He wondered if his mobile phone would be able to provide an answer to this query as well as how to attract girls. His personal dilemma was focused on either becoming engrossed in academics or to be a part of the modern technology-driven world. For Ravindran, college was an interesting place to be in, but he wanted something more out of life, and in 2008, he decided to launch a technology company with some friends. This venture was to be called Innoz Technologies.
Sketching Innoz and the painters Only a few are lucky enough to establish a new company while still in college. These young technology entrepreneurs decided to make an IT product called a “Tranz” initially to launch Innoz Technologies (Exhibit 1 contains Innoz’s vision and profile), a peer-to-peer file-sharing application that was not successful and caused them to lose their initial funding. This case study is published in partnership with the Asian Being a start-up company, the owners had a critical task of setting up their business in the Society of Management and midst of the rising dot-com bubble space, and Ravindran and his colleagues each brought Marketing Research (ASMMR) as part of the 2014 ASMMR – their own skill set and experience to the company. Deepak Abhinav, Ashwin and Hisam Emerald EEMCS Teaching each agreed that “Leaders are born and not made”. None of them came from business Case Competition. The authors would like to express their families but they all had the fire of a burning ambition to do something different and new that sincere thanks to Deepak would bring them instant fame and money. As the undergraduate CEO of Innoz, Ravindran Ravindran, CEO Innoz Technologies, for giving them found it difficult to manage work and studies, but he believed that with determination, there the interesting opportunity to would be success eventually. The team was encouraged to receive support from their write this rich case. college and teachers, and all participants invested time and effort into Innoz, hoping to Disclaimer. This case is written emulate the Silicon Valley culture of students creating businesses and heading for fame solely for educational purposes and is not intended and fortune. to represent successful or unsuccessful managerial decision making. The author/s Eureka moment may have disguised names; financial and other The team, consisting of Ravindran with Mohammad Hisamussin, Abhinav Sree and Ashwin recognizable information to protect confidentiality. Nath, worked to seek a solution to the real-world problem of dependency on the Internet.
DOI 10.1108/EEMCS-09-2014-0207 VOL. 5 NO. 1 2015, pp. 1-20, © Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 2045-0621 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES PAGE 1 For Ravindran, a mobile with no Internet connectivity was of not much use, and he and his friends sought to create an innovative solution for mobile phones. This was a trigger moment that caused Ravindran to imagine the world with no Internet connectivity, and he wondered about consumers moving toward adopting smartphones, but he was keen to discover a world beyond the Internet and smartphones. He was inspired by the way Google harnessed the power of online searches and their quick responses to user requests within a fraction of a second, and it made him realize the full potential of tapping into the current market of cell phone users with no Internet capability. Ravindran, Hisam, Sree and Nath (see Exhibit 2 for management team biography) planned to transform the way in which searches were performed on the Internet. The idea was to create an offline search engine that was able to bridge the gap between Internet connectivity and mobile penetration. Ravindran discovered that text messaging in particular had unlimited potential acceptability among mobile users in India. He wondered if they would be able to create the largest offline search engine on mobiles that would be able to convert a normal phone into a smartphone and normal user into a smart user. With this idea in the mind and after testing the market potential, Ravindran and the team launched the SMSGyan service for searches on mobile phones with no requirement of Internet connection. For Indian users, SMS[1] usage is substantial, as an average Indian mobile user spends 14 minutes per day on messaging and uses 8.4 SMS daily of total mobile usage time (Mobile Usage in India, 2009). The plan was christened “SMSGyan[2]” and was fueled by young think-tankers to become the powerhouse of offline revolution.
Incubation of SMSGyan At SMSGyan, a nugget of a newfound idea was nourished with determination by the team to make it successful. Ravindran ideas were ahead of his time, but he realized he was too young to be taken seriously without making a serious effort. SMSGyan aimed to create cutting-edge technology for innovative growth and, to accomplish this, each member of the team dropped out of college to chase their dream and widen their chances of becoming successful entrepreneurs (see Exhibit 3 for organization structure). The series of rejections the fledgling company faced never made them contemplate the idea of giving up, and the team knew that the biggest challenge for any start-up was making the venture generate revenue and profit. The SMS search engine on mobile phones had real potential to be successful, and Ravindran went to each and every mobile operator in Gurgaon and Mumbai looking for support. This proved to be very frustrating for Ravindran, as no one recognized the young talent and he believed Indians should support and encourage young innovators as they were supported in other countries, the most notable being Mark Zuckerberg in America. Ravindran was disappointed by the reception he received, and he went to a coffee shop at the Airtel campus in Gurgaon. Fortuitously, he met the head of new products and services, with whom he shared his ideas and exchanged cards, and this meeting was to become a real opportunity for Ravindran. After meeting with Ravindran next day, the Airtel manager decided to select SMSGyan’s service to be offered to their mobile phone users. Innoz eventually received angel funding from Freeman Murray (co-founder of Jaaga), Satish Dharmaraj (partner at Redpoint Ventures), Kris Gopalakrishnan (founder at Infosys), Arun Kumar (partner at KPMG), KCC Nair (CFO of Technopark) and Sanjay Vijayakumar (CEO of MobME Wireless), among others, at different stages of its growth and also got technical support from Sun, Intel and Microsoft through their start-up essential programs. In April 2012, Innoz acquired a round of funding from Seedfund Advisors, an early-stage venture capital fund that had been started in 2006 by Pravin Gandhi, Bharti Jacob and Mahesh Murthy. Seedfund became the sole investor in Innoz and owned a significant
PAGE 2 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES VOL. 5 NO. 1 2015 minority stake in the company. Ravindran and his friends had finally made it, and began to receive recognition from around the world (see Exhibit 4 for awards and recognition).
Voice of the innovator (an interview with CEO of the company) Author: Innoz Technology is a team of young drivers. What are the lessons they learned from the early days of the start-up? Innoz: How we made it – The lessons learned (the company’s “Success Mantra”):
Starting up young has many advantages. Finding a great team with complementary skills and similar attitudes. Keeping technology to the minimum so it is easily understood. Solve problems. Practice storytelling, as all entrepreneurs should be good storytellers. Mentorship is extremely important; lack of experience can only be matched with advice and inspiration from those more experienced in the industry. Take external sources of funds only when necessary. Your clients are your biggest investors. Partner with the best and the biggest clients. Entrepreneurship cannot be taught, the best way to succeed is to experiment. Author: What sets Innoz apart from the other players in the mobile technology and software arena business? Innoz: Updating of social media by use of interesting apps with no Internet required enabled by SMS. Everything available on the Internet is available to the user on-demand by SMS. We are not focused on smartphones, as they are not everywhere. We want to make dumb phones smart! Author: What are the major challenges faced by Innoz? How are you prepared to overcome those challenges? Innoz: I had my first company when I was in school after being inspired by the Bollywood movie “Swades”. Later on I had another company in school and sold both of them to a friend. Every idea I tried to implement was ahead of its time but I was too young to be taken seriously for business. Ah! We are still young. We have got our mantra of doing serious business. Author: What are the future expansion plans for the next five years? Innoz: Innoz was formed in 2008. In 2014 have established a firm presence in Nepal, Sri Lanka and Dubai with telecom vendors. We are further looking ahead at expansion in other countries.
Innoz strategy Technology The option available to users is smartphones that encompass stronger features of Internet capabilities, powerful processor and better storage options. SMSGyan’s platform was re-christened “55444” and had the ability to deliver mobile-optimized results compatible with any number of databases or resources. Users text a question to the Innoz server on 55444, the algorithms then go around the Web and its related databases and send the SMS results supporting up to a maximum 500 characters of information across all operators in India (see Exhibits 5 and 6 for technology infrastructure). The SMSGyan engine shortens the results to be sent to a mobile phone via the text message route. For example, if a user wants to know a cricket score, they would have to type “cricket score” and send it to 55444,
VOL. 5 NO. 1 2015 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES PAGE 3 and pay a Rs. 1 per query charge. Subscription packs for an unlimited search facility is also available to the regular SMSGyan users. The Internet for e-SMS was created with different productivity apps[3] for the mobile phone. Users can get instant answers in the following categories: encyclopedia, dictionary, acronym, live cricket scores, movie reviews, book reviews, weather alerts, stock market, gadgets and prices by creating their own keywords. Other recent additions to premium services include localized searches, job search and even a health service over the phone. For these services, the platform makes use of its content partners to deliver the required information. Innoz worked in partnership with Wikipedia, YouTube, Google and Yahoo to provide answers to user queries (India Today, 2013).
Marketing and promotion SMSGyan created an SMS push service where the user can send a query to 55444 and can get immediate answers sent back to their mobile phone. On “friendship day”, Innoz teamed up with Airtel Bangalore to set up a 140-square-foot message screen to display messages from the users outside shopping mall. The focus of the 55444 platform was used to capture and share the needs and feelings of the common man. Innoz’s team celebrated this auspicious day at the Airtel relationship center by distributing 100,000 sampler cards with chocolates to passers-by. Ravindran believes that the SMS market has huge potential, even if the telecom regulations operate with the limits of 200 SMSs, and the market opportunity gives different and new career opportunities to people passionate about this field (The Economic Times, 2012).
The mobile Internet market For Ravindran, the sanctity of his idea became a mantra for his success. Innoz SMSGyan was designed for low-end mobile phones and they now have a user base of 120 million, including nearly 100 million of SMS traffic each month. The SMSGyan engine has answered over 10 billion queries to date, with an average of 2 million queries being made each day. A low percentage of low-cost and inexpensive feature phones are used to access the Internet on mobile devices, and accessing the Internet on low-cost mobile devices is not convenient. The Internet in India crossed the milestone of 100 million users in 2011. Even though 69 per cent of the Indian population resides in rural areas, most of the Internet users in India originate from urban parts of the country. This presents a huge opportunity for growth in Internet usage. There are 38 million mobile phone users in rural India, 4.6 per cent of which have access to the Internet. Out of a rural population of 833 million, 323 million are mobile phone users and just 3.6 million are mobile Internet users (IAMAI, 2012). India is expected to have close to 165 million mobile Internet users by March 2015, up from 87.1 million in December 2012, as more people are accessing the Web through mobile devices and dongles (The Indian Express, 2012). There has been a rapid increase in the number of smartphone users, and 50 per cent of them in India are under the age of 25 (Live Mint, 2013). Due to the decrease in device costs collaboration, and an increase in the data exchange and features, customers are encouraged to shift from using traditional phones to smartphones. Ravindran knew that he and his partners needed to outline the risks faced by his business.
Google: father of online search With the growth of the dot-com bubble space, there was an exponential increase in the number of users accessing Google to obtain answers to their queries. “Mobile phone-based Internet usage is a key component of Indian Internet usage, and I’d say the recent growth is being driven by mobile Internet usage”, said Nilotpal Chakravarti, spokesperson for the Internet and Mobile Association of India.
PAGE 4 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES VOL. 5 NO. 1 2015 The competitors 63336 is not simply a five-digit number: this number can answer any question that strikes any mind anywhere and anytime. 63336, formerly known as AQA 63336, was created to answer factual questions and philosophical questions and also to help with interpersonal questions by attempting to solve arguments, or just for entertainment. Answers to questions were speedily given by home-based researchers in accurate and concise English. The mobile service is UK-based and has answered 27 million questions for about 2.5 million customers. txtweb.com (company name txtWeb) works in a similar fashion, in that a user needs to SMS a keyword to get an answer to their query. The SMS-based browser is much more user-friendly than the computer-based Web browsers. txtWeb is a SMS-based news network capable of making a citizen a journalist. Its main idea is to give users a platform to voice their opinions and insights about current events by generating awareness but giving limited powers to journalists. On txtWeb, citizen’s news articles can be voted on, commented on and easily shared with others. This Web site empowers citizens and strengthens the concept of citizen journalism while supporting regional languages too. It has a presence in India, the USA and Canada and is progressing further toward expansion in other countries. Chacha.com is a US-based question-and-answer Web portal. It has emerged as a real-time, human-powered query-answering site known for giving accurate answers through SMS on Android and iPhones. The mobile application has built-in live streaming to view questions by other users and accordingly rate the answer. The user can sign up for alerts from the category of interest. The answers can also be shared with the social networking Web site Facebook. Buzzanytime is a SMS-based question and answer-based service that concentrates on the human touch. The human operators read the query answer in English or the regional language and reply back with response time dependent on the complexity of the query. The model works on the principle of human intervention to give precise results to complex queries that may have abbreviations or spelling issues. The application is in the beta stage and considers Innoz competition with its 12 million unique customers, despite the fact that Google’s mobile phone smart messaging service is available across the globe and allows users to search by sending text messages and the results are sent as reply with no premium charges. Innoz’s competitors were identified (see Table I for comparative analysis) and txtWeb emerged as its strongest competitor with a higher Indian and global rank index. Users are spending more time on the txtWeb Web site and their bounce rate is lower than Innoz’s is.
Taking the next step Innoz Technologies has plans to strengthen their roots in India and expand globally (see Exhibit 7 for expansion plan). Sree announced that the company has been holding talks
Table I Competitor analysis Global Indian Daily time on Bounce No. Company Web link rank rank site (min) rate (%) Country base Customer base
1 Innoz innoz.in 377,320 77,371 2:34 37.50 India 20 million Technologies 2 63336 63336.com 1,357,928 N/A 1:55 58.80 UK 2.5 million 3 txtWeb txtweb.com 96,767 15,880 22:44 20.40 USA, Canada, N/A India 4 Chacha chacha.com 1,170 N/A 2:50 45.10 US-based N/A 5 Buzzanytime buzzanytime.com No data available due to very low global and India and global 12 million Indian rank Source: Alexa.com
VOL. 5 NO. 1 2015 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES PAGE 5 with mobile phone manufacturers, including Nokia and Micromax, to pre-install Innoz OS on their basic phone models to access social networking Web sites and check e-mails. Ravindran aims to set up a billion-dollar company in the next five years with support from investors, including Silicon Valley veterans, and supported by Intel, Microsoft and SUN. For its users, SMSGyan acts as a content delivery platform that intends to support images and videos but not audio searches (see Exhibit 8 for the search domains). For each request, a WAP link sends to a user’s mobile device an answer to their query while SMS is in its primary interface. To enhance this, Innoz partnered with Wikipedia, Bing, Wolfram Alpha and databases that aggregate health, transport or sports data. “Users can send Gmail messages, update their Facebook status or tweet, just by coming online once and texting”, says Ravindran (Wired, 2013). Users need to register online for the service and receive a unique Facebook code to register for the access through SMS. A set of keywords are used for the access and include: “home” and SMS 55444 to get a home feed, “timeline” to get a timeline posts, “status” to post status updates and “notification” to read unread notifications. With the additional funding, Innoz plans to further improve its product and strengthen its technology base to support the increase in demand and traffic. It also plans to use the funds to create a unique identity for “55444” as the best place to find information on mobile (Business Standard, 2012).
Project Brownie The offline Android-based Web browser “Brownie” has the ability to work both in the offline and online modes. Working on SMS technology on the back end of the Web browser, “Brownie” can load a Web page in a text mode with no Internet connection required. The strategic idea behind the project was to leverage an exceptional user experience to the users through messaging services on affordable devices for the target market focusing on customers who are unable to access information through broadband usage.
Satvika 2013 The technology revolution Satvika 2013 had nearly 200 brilliant minds developing an innovative application for mobile phones. The idea was to promote the specific skill sets of adolescent girls and provide them an opportunity to create interesting applications for mobile phones. Many of the applications created in the project were primarily for societal benefits such as “#duedate” for mothers to find out when they will have a baby, “#preg” to provide information to pregnant ladies and “#baby” to provide information on baby vaccines.
Startup Village Ravindran enjoys the role of job creator rather than of job seeker, and his main goal is to showcase to the world that India’s got talent. He wants to create a path for college students to plan their own ventures and is campaigning for government support in terms of amending regulations with regards to accommodating fluctuations in grades and attendance for students partaking in ventures. With this idea in place, the Startup Village came into existence and was created by Ravindran and will be one of the largest business incubators in the world at 100,000 square feet. Sijo George, the Village’s ambitious CEO, believes the idea has grown into a massive initiative and is transforming the landscape of Kerala. The company supports over 500 applications, supporting an estimated 170 companies and more than 50 applications from college students. Freeman Murray, the Director of the Startup Village, believes it is a golden opportunity for technology start-ups and will enhance technology learning, networking and a way of learning together in a team.
PAGE 6 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES VOL. 5 NO. 1 2015 India’s first telecom incubator from the Startup Village has sponsored a team for the “Unreasonable at Sea”, a unique seafaring group of a select group of entrepreneurs, mentors, educators and students who are travelling the world with the aim of fast-tracking the development of technological solutions to modern-day challenges (Economic Times, 2013).
Anonymous chat service Innoz launched additional services of anonymous chat over SMS in June 2013. The platform “Hi” enables users to chat with each other without revealing the mobile number. The user sends a “Hi” message to the server 54200 and then the mobile chat app will connect to the other user for the chat service. The user can change the user by sending the SMS the message “CHANGE” to 54200 and again disconnect the chat at any time by inputting the SMS keyword “QUIT”.
SMS query engine limitations The SMSGyan, a SMS-based query engine, has the following challenges to manage:
Regional language: The users in certain areas want to post queries in their regional language. The engine should be able to intelligently support different regional languages. Spelling: The engine is not able to interpret incorrect spelling. Abbreviation: The abbreviations are not interpreted accordingly. Complex queries: Certain queries are complex that require human intervention. User profiling: No tracking of user behavior. Limited length: The SMS reply is limited to a number of characters or lines. The limited space gives limited answers to a query.
How to do it? Ravindran strongly felt that his application could benefit a large section of the population using low-end mobile devices instead of smartphones. He couldn’t stop thinking about the value addition created by the launch of the 55444 app on his career trajectory. He realized the Internet access on mobile phones was becoming affordable with the recent updates to the Internet standards and that the number of consumers accessing the Internet on their mobile phones is increasing exponentially. Research shows that, in India, the SMS queries predominantly come in from the south zone, which accounts for 40 per cent, followed by the west zone at 25 per cent and the rest accounted for by the east and north zones (NDTV, 2012). Ravindran farmed the seeds of innovation for low-end mobile users. The majority of the population is shifting from low-end mobile devices to smartphones to meet their different and growing needs (see Exhibit 9 for the mobile usage patterns). Android-based cell phones are a preferred choice today, as consumers are increasingly using multimedia support on their mobile phones. The online search engines support multimedia-based searches to users for images, audio and videos. This knowledge of the market triggered Ravindran to make a plan to imbibe the characteristics of services to Innoz SMSGyan users. For rural customers, Ravindran planned to support SMSGyan services in accommodating regional languages, which shows a distinct paradigm shift from typical mobile services offering user-focused information through an access-centered approach. Ravindran’s vision is to build the largest offline search engine in the present digital era of smartphone and application-driven society, and his adaptability to survive and grow in the age of mobile technology upgrade has happened swiftly. For Ravindran, it has not been easy to achieve such excellence, especially in the world of giant competitors, but he was
VOL. 5 NO. 1 2015 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES PAGE 7 able to beat the competition with innovative technology and a dedicated team The Brainstorm. As Ravindran recalled his company’s history, he returned to the question of how far the offline query-based search engine can go on the land of the Internet and smartphone users. He had his answer, he thought. Ravindran paused and called for a team meeting. He knew this meeting could be a turning point for their business and he raised the question to his team: Do you think Innoz will be able to sustain in business over the long-term with the SMSGyan service made for low-end mobile users in the rising world of Internet-enabled smartphone users? What are the competitive advantages of Innoz? How could this be exploited to expand the company and establish a strong brand image? Should Innoz go for global expansion or restrict themselves to the domestic market? How effectively can mobile technology developed by Innoz be used to impart education and learning? What are the marketing strategies followed by Innoz? Will they be able to maintain the same level of customer enthusiasm and confidence? Do you think the concept of a “Silicon Valley culture” can be relevant to the Indian society and business environment? Can young entrepreneurship become a culture in India? Do they have the potential to progress? Can Innoz, as a start-up company, flourish and sustain Keywords: in the era of the dot-com bubble? What are the possible obstacles faced by Innoz? Social transformation, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Notes Marketing, 1. SMS: Abbreviation for Short Messaging Service. It is a text messaging service component for Strategy, mobile phones. Mobile technology, 2. SMSGyan is a service offered by telecom operators where any information about the searched SMSGyan, keyword is received through SMS. The user needs to type in the query and SMS it to 55444. Offline search, 3. Wikipedia: A mobile application (or mobile app) is a software application designed to run on Smartphone smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile devices.
References Business Standard (2012), “Kerala startup Innoz gets VC for mobile search engine product”, available at: www.business-standard.com/article/press-releases/kerala-startup-innoz-gets-vc-for-mobile- search-engine-product-112043000064_1.html IAMAI (2012), “Report on Internet in rural India”. India Today (2013), “Deepak Ravindran talks about his success”, available at: http://indiatoday. intoday.in/story/deepak-ravindran-innoz-entreprenuer-india-kerela/1/202505.html (accessed May 2013). The Economic Times (2012), “How Innoz Technology provides apps without internet or 3G connection”, available at: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-07-24/news/32827862_ 1_app-developers-mobile-app-innoz The Economic Times (2013), “Global mentors share tips with young guns at startup village”, available at: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-03-07/news/37531865_1_startup-village-innoz- technologies-sanjay-vijayakumar
The Indian Express (2012), “165 million mobile Internet users in India by March 2015: IAMAI-IMRB”, available at: www.indianexpress.com/news/165-mn-mobile-internet-users-in-india-by-mar-2015- iamaiimrb/1053445/ (accessed June 2013). Live Mint (2013), “50% of smart phone users in India are under 25 years: Nielsen”, available at: www.livemint.com/Politics/HYrKyOYLTMgzZgzosw12iM/50-of-smartphone-users-in-India-are-under- 25-yrs-Nielsen.html (accessed January 2014). Mobile Usage in India (2009), Informate Intelligence, Mobile Usage in India. NDTV (2012), “Innoz touches one billion mark on SMS queries”, available at: http://gadgets.ndtv.com/ mobiles/news/innoz-touches-one-billion-mark-on-sms-queries-300412
Wired (2013), “No smart phone? No problem. Deepak Ravindran has a search engine for you”, available at: www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/04/start/he-runs-the-offline-internet (accessed May 2013).
PAGE 8 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES VOL. 5 NO. 1 2015 Exhibit 1: Vision and profile
Vision: Our vision is to become the best place for people to find information on a mobile. Specialties: Telecommunication, cloud computing, value-added services Headquarters: Innoz Technologies (Pvt) Ltd, # B/7,17th Cross, 1st Main Road, KHB Colony, Koramangala 5th block, Bangalore 560095, Karnataka, India. Web site: www.innoz.in Company size: 11-50 employees Revenue: 2011-2012 – Rs. 60,380,921/- (audited) Founded: 2008 Source: Company profile on LinkedIn.com
Exhibit 2
Innoz management team Deepak Ravindran (born: 27 March 1988) is an entrepreneur, best known as the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Innoz Technologies (Pvt) Ltd, one of the fastest-growing mobile company in India. Innoz was incepted as Swades Solutions, an offshore Web design firm in 2005 while Deepak was still in high school. Deepak, along with the other co-founders of Innoz represented India in the finals of DFJ-CISCO Global Business Plan Competition 2009. He is also the youngest recipient of one-on-one mentoring from Indian Angel Network via the Economic Times Power of Ideas Initiatives. Mohammed Hisamuddin is an entrepreneur, best known as the co-founder and CIO of Innoz Technologies (Pvt) Ltd, one of the fastest-growing mobile VAS companies in India. Hisamuddin initiated the concepts of SMSGyan and Tranz, two of Innoz’s flagship products. SMSGyan is now rebranded as 55444, and was recently opened up to third-party developers to create SMS apps upon the powerful 55444 platform http://55444.in/apps and Hisamuddin now heads this app platform. Ashwin Nath is an entrepreneur and consultant who is passionate about technology in general, and specialized in mobile, new media and Internet. With a technological background and good understanding of business and marketing, Ashwin has always been between technicians, managers and marketers helping to create positive dialogue, boosting existing products, creating new ones incorporating new technologies and the use of open source. At Innoz, Ashwin is responsible for streamlining all the technical deliverables, meeting customer expectations and defining the roadmap for the near future, determining how technology can be used to implement business strategy and focusing efforts on using technology to provide better products and services to external customers or clients. Abhinav Sree (born: 13 November 1987) is a technology entrepreneur and a co-founder and COO of Innoz Technologies (Pvt) Ltd, a leading mobile VAS company based in India. He has been responsible for the entire product development cycle, from idea implementation to generating revenues. SMSGyan and Innoz have been mentioned in many media reports for the brilliance in its innovation. Sree has been instrumental in expanding Innoz from a student entrepreneur’s dream to a sustainable business entity. Source: Profiles on LinkedIn.com
VOL. 5 NO. 1 2015 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES PAGE 9 Exhibit 3
Figure E1 Organization structure
Exhibit 4
Awards and recognitions 2010 – Received special recognition while at Billionth Award South Asia 2010 and invited for the World Summit Award MOBILE, Abu Dhabi. 2010 – NASSCOM rated Innoz one of the Top 8 Emerging Product Companies of 2010. 2010 – Rated in the top 10 mobile application companies in India by IAMAI. 2010 – Innoz is a Finalist for Red Herring’s top 100 Global Award, a prestigious list honoring the most promising private technology ventures from the Asia business region. 2009 – Rated among the 16 companies to participate in the finals of DFJ-CISCO Global Business Plan Competition and the youngest to receive one-on-one mentoring from Indian Angel Network. 2009 – Finalist for Economic Times, Power of Ideas Business Plan Competition. Source: Company Documents and Innoz Presentation on SMSGYAN at MIT-EmTech 2011, Bangalore. www.slideshare.net/innoz/innoz-presentation-on-smsgyan-at-mitemtech-2011bangalore
Exhibit 5
Figure E2 Technology infrastructure
PAGE 10 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES VOL. 5 NO. 1 2015 Figure E2 shows an overview of SMSGyan technology network. It focuses on the path a text message follows where the SMS is sent from the low-end mobile device, crosses the server and fetches information from the databases connected through the Internet.
Exhibit 6
Figure E3 55444 app store
In 2012, Innoz decided to open up the 55444 platform to the outside world and now anyone can have their own keyword starting with # on 55444. On 55444.in/apps is a host of apps right from productivity to interesting SMS-based games and users are invited to create what might be the next successful SMS app. 5000 developer community on the 55444 app store with more than 10,000 apps and 5 million requests for accessing app store content. Expected by 2013-2014 developer – 10,000 and applications – 50,000
Exhibit 7
Table EI Innoz presence and expansion plans Presence (2012-2013)
Operators (Service live) Airtel, India Nepal Telecom Aircel, India N Cell, Nepal Idea, India UTL, Nepal Vodafone, India Smartcell, Nepal Loop Mobile, India Dialog, Sri Lanka Tata Docomo, India Du Mobile, Dubai
Expansion Plans (2013-2014) Upcoming launches Active discussions
BSNL, India D-Tac, Thailand MTNL, India AIS, Thailand Uninor, India True Move, Thailand Airtel, Sri Lanka Grameen, Bangladesh Airtel, Africa Airtel, Bangladesh Source: Company documents
VOL. 5 NO. 1 2015 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES PAGE 11 Exhibit 8
Figure E4 Search on SMSGyan – usage patterns (2012-2014)
Exhibit 9
Mobile Internet users and category
Figure E5 Mobile Internet users
Figure E6 Category of mobile Internet usage
About the authors Roma Puri before joining academics has comprehensive experience with IT corporate giants as a software developer and consultant. She is active in professional service, serving
PAGE 12 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES VOL. 5 NO. 1 2015 conference program committees, organizing workshops and industry engagements. Her area of interest includes information retrieval, data mining, knowledge management and semantic web. She is an Indian national who is amicable to international culture and practices. She is an innovative self-starter, who rarely needs supervision. Roma Puri is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected] or [email protected] Amit Kumar has enrolled as a Research Scholar (Doctoral Program in Strategic Management) at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ranchi, India. He has around seven years of experiences both in corporate and management teaching. He is a Junior Research Fellow in management and commerce by the University Grant Commission, Government of India. He has a master’s degree in commerce, a postgraduate diploma in international management from Switzerland, a postgraduate diploma in international business operation and a Bachelor of Engineering degree in computer science.
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