Business Basics
Company Name
Way2SMS

Way2SMS - Snapshot



Business Basics
Company Name
Way2SMS
Founded in
2006
Headquartered in
Hyderabad
Company website/URL
http://www.way2sms.com
Industry
Telecom/ Mobile
Stage of the company
Scaling up
Source of idea
Systematic search for business opportunity
Awards & honors
-NO-
We believe that meaningful partnerships are the foundation for success. Partnerships enable us to make continuous improvements and offer best of breed solutions to our customers.
We have recently partnered with Phoneytunes, a top player in the telecom VAS segment, for mobile content. Phoneytunes provides us mobile content such as ringtones, wallpapers, videos, games, animations etc.
We have also tied up with Mauj, a telecom solutions company, to strengthen our Bollywood mobile content offerings to our users.
These two partnerships, today, make Way2SMS a one stop shop for any mobile download requirement. Furthermore, through an alliance with US based Gamejump, a leader in mobile gaming and applications, we are able to offer advertisement supported free games to all our users.
This partnership has again proved our commitment towards advertisement funded service to users. Users can download games free of cost from our WAP portal at http://games.way2sms.com.



Business description
Way2SMS.com is India's first portal to offer its users text messaging absolutely free of cost. The text messages are appended with ads which can be geo-targeted. Users get this free text messaging service in exchange for opting in to have targeted ads appended to their message.
Mobile users can register at absolutely no cost with Way2SMS.com, a...> Read more..
Way2SMS.com is India's first portal to offer its users text messaging absolutely free of cost. The text messages are appended with ads which can be geo-targeted. Users get this free text messaging service in exchange for opting in to have targeted ads appended to their message.
Mobile users can register at absolutely no cost with Way2SMS.com, and start sending out text messages to their near and dear ones across the country.
Out of the 160 characters of a standard SMS, Way2SMS offers only 110 characters to the User to send out their personal SMS. The rest of the characters are reserved for geo-targeted advertisement or Mobitisement. The smaller the message that the users send, the larger the ad content that will be pushed with it.
The Way2SMS Dynamic Ad platform allows advertisers to insert ads in 120, 85 and 35 characters depending on the users personal message length.
Although SMS has gained tremendous popularity, its growth has been hampered in countries such as India due to high costs that have to be borne by the mobile user.
Currently India's mobile user base is more than a staggering 29 crores. When it comes to end subscribers, the advertising potential is as huge as the Indian print media. However, Indian advertisers, till recently, did not have the right platform to reach out to this ever growing base of Indian mobile users.
Our pioneering model benefits both users as well as advertisers. Advertisers need not worry about database & spam issues and can reach out to their target audience. Simultaneously, users can communicate more for nothing through ad funded messaging.
This revolutionary effort has already captured the imagination of millions of mobile users across the globe. Currently, Way2SMS has got more than 2 million registered users through word of mouth. Also, it's reaching over 8 million unique mobiles every month.
Our Objective is to reach out to every mobile user at least once in a month, thus creating a strong platform for advertisers for winning mobile advertising proposition.


How does the business make money?
Way2SMS believes that ad supported messaging is the key channel to drive revenues.
Our revenue streams include:
1. Mobitisements (appended advertisements)
2. Online advertising on our portal way2sms.com (CPC/CPM /CPL modes)
3. Banner advertisements on WAP (We work on CPC and CPM basis here)
4. Lead generation through banners/e-mailers


Team information
V. V. Raju, Founder & CEO
Way2SMS was conceptualized by Mr. V. Raju, an MCA from Nagarjuna University, Andhra Pradesh. He founded Way2SMS in 2006, at a time when all computer graduates were making it big in blue chip companies.
Way2SMS, a brainchild of Mr. Raju, has been the huge bridging gap between the mobile user and the marketer, and has revolutionized the concept of 'Mobitisement'.


Team information
V. V. Raju, Founder & CEO
Way2SMS was conceptualized by Mr. V. Raju, an MCA from Nagarjuna University, Andhra Pradesh. He founded Way2SMS in 2006, at a time when all computer graduates were making it big in blue chip companies.
Way2SMS, a brainchild of Mr. Raju, has been the huge bridging gap between the mobile user and the marketer, and has revolutionized the concept of 'Mobitisement'.




Competition
Competitors
160by2.com
How different is your product or service? It has...
No substitutes available
In what way is your product or service different?
In short, we provide the best in class solutions to both mobile users and advertisers.
What differentiates Way2SMS is our Quality and Te...> Read more..
In what way is your product or service different?
In short, we provide the best in class solutions to both mobile users and advertisers.
What differentiates Way2SMS is our Quality and Technology. Our user base is almost twice as compared to our nearest competitor.
We believe that our key differentiators lie in five areas:
1. Young enthusiastic, skilled team: Ours is a young, extremely talented, vibrant team, which is the pillar behind our growth.
2. Leadership in the market: Mobile advertising is still a nascent field all over the world, and advertisers are grappling with various issues, at the same time, trying to figure out that 'winning trend'.
3. Understanding of business & focused approach: We have a clear strategy to focus on our business - both to mobile users and advertisers. Our previous experience in providing enterprise messaging solutions to corporates has enabled us to understand the needs of both these target segments.
4. Technology: We have an excellent product engineering team that has built robust and highly scalable systems to handle huge SMS traffic.
5. Brand Value: We take pride in the fact that we have made our mark in the Indian and global market through our unique and revolutionary offering. Currently, Way2SMS is the only largest platform reaching out to more than 8 million mobiles every month.
6. Viral marketing: Each and every user of Way2SMS acts as a brand ambassador for us. Because of this, we have gained more than 2 million users in 18 months, at a time when companies are investing crores of money to acquire users.
7. Commitment to Quality: The quality of our service and technology practices has catapulted us into the big league in a short span of time.


By The Numbers

2006
2007
No. of employees
6-15
26-50
No. of locations
0-1
0-1
No. of customers
6-15
16-50
Turnover
11-50 lacs
1-5 crore
Profits
losing money
6 to 15 lacs

Primary source of initial funding
Family & friends
Primary source of additional funding
Family & friends
Raised institutional capital?
No


Why is this startup hot?
We have been instrumental in creating a huge market for mobile advertising in India. Our revolutionary concept has made marketers think about mobile users as their target audience. Now, many agencies are setting up dedicated teams to device mobile marketing strategies for their brands.
As the pioneer in the Mobitisement space, we are happy to s...> Read more..
We have been instrumental in creating a huge market for mobile advertising in India. Our revolutionary concept has made marketers think about mobile users as their target audience. Now, many agencies are setting up dedicated teams to device mobile marketing strategies for their brands.
As the pioneer in the Mobitisement space, we are happy to say that we are currently ranked amongst the top 70 most visited portals in India. We are able to generate more than 40 million page views every month. We reach out to more than 8 million unique mobile users every month.
In addition, we have been able to garner more than 2 million registered users in a very short span of 18 months through word of mouth. We are extremely proud to state that our users range across as many as 126 countries.
Currently, Way2SMS has become the largest Mobile advertising platform for Indian marketers.


Per-message carrier fees killing SMS marketing: CTIA panel
By Dan Butcher
April 1, 2009
Time for a new business model for mobile messaging?
LAS VEGAS - The per-message fees that carriers charge mobile marketers are killing the business model for SMS and MMS-based marketing, according to a panel at the CTIA Wireless 2009: Mobile Life conference.
More than 2.6 billion text messages are sent every day in the United States, giving it the largest reach of any mobile channel and making it a powerful enabler to brand recognition and development, with some of the biggest brands in the world having embraced texting as a significant consumer touch point. However, the messaging business model needs serious retooling to make it viable for advertisers and aggregators, according to the panel.
“Messaging is the most ubiquitous form of mobile communication, and there are great new opportunities in the long tail, but the per-message fee obliterates the business model, because that leads to unbounded liability,” said John Styers, panel moderator and president of Moblico LLC. “A new model is required for the industry to take the next step to the new frontier of messaging, and that model cannot include a per-message fee.


“All organizations have to work on flat fees, and the original models were only meant to support the ecosystem for 6 or 9 months,” he said. “The carriers have done little to speed the robust development of the messaging ecosystem in the U.S., and it needs support from the back end.”
Many panelists seconded Mr. Styers’ call for more carrier support—and a different business model.
Limbo delivers more than 20 million messages monthly for clients such as Neste, Purina and P&G
Messaging types include SMS, XHTML, optimized XHTML, iPhone-specific messaging and XMPP. Eric Collins, vice president of Nuance, discussed his company’s voice-to-text and text-to-voice offerings.
Whatever the type, companies have struggled to build a stable business taking advantage of the inventory within the various types of messaging.
“For advertising-supported SMS, the net revenue per message is $0.004, and the carriers dispute this, but that’s the reality of the business,” said David Oberholzer, vice president of Limbo. “The model isn’t completely solid, and it’s unrealistic to think the CPMs we’ll be able to charge will go up dramatically, so it’s unrealistic for carriers trying to impose these types of per-message fees.
HipCricket says it all starts with SMS
“Even relatively small carrier fees will drive out innovation to other platforms, and that’s already happening—look at all the advertising in iPhone apps,” he said. “If carriers raise costs, then that will be exacerbated.”
Panelists seemed eager to reach out to carriers and discuss alternatives to the per-message-fee model.
“We’re having an open dialogue with carriers as to what the model should be,” Mr. Oberholzer said. “We’re looking for a way to grow the pot, such as including demographic and location information so we can charge higher rates and everyone can make more money.
“To grow the platform, everyone involved in the ecosystem has to engage in open dialogue,” he said.
Verizon Wireless has told SMS aggregators it will not impose an additional 3-cent transaction fee for every outbound SMS message sent to its subscriber base.
That charge from the nation's No. 1 wireless carrier would have either doubled or tripled the cost to marketers who send out SMS text messages to opted-in consumers who are subscribers of Verizon Wireless' mobile phone services (see story).
The major media brand on the panel said that it is hard for it to sell SMS advertising because messaging is not plugged into its ad infrastructure, DART.
“SMS advertising is difficult to package and sell if we can’t see what next month’s inventory is,” said Chip Canter, vice president of wireless platform development for NBC Universal. “On the other hand SMS is the easiest to do, everyone’s texting, so it’s a wonderful ways to engage consumers.
“You can say ‘text this to this when you’re out and about’ and have consumers click-to-call, forward messages to friends and family, click to mobile Web, click to download content, but if it’s not part of the infrastructure to sell, and if message fees eat into costs, that’s uncapped liability, meaning we don’t know what the costs are going to be,” he said.
Especially given the state of the economy and the fact that the advertising pie is fixed at the beginning of the year, that is a problem.
NBC has had success building SMS into other campaigns, often encouraging TV viewers to engage with their favorite shows via SMS.
“There are lots of opportunities in messaging, but we’re struggling to find the multimillion dollar way to make messaging in and of itself a business,” Mr. Canter said. “We had to reduce our costs and use text messaging as part of something larger to drive usage of the mobile Web, mobile video and apps.
“There are infrastructure and cost issues, because we don’t want to drive billions of messages and get a billion dollar invoice and $100 in revenue,” he said. “That’s a fundamental issue in terms of investment, because we cannot make that investment if there’s uncapped liability on wholesale pricing.
“The fundamental thing is scale, figuring out how to plug it into our existing mature digital infrastructure, because everything that’s a stand-alone will hang out by itself at the lunch table.”
Other panelists agreed that messaging works best when integrated with other media.
“SMS is great when you weave it in as part of your overall mix, but it’s not incredibly exciting as a stand-alone,” said Eric Harber, president/COO of HipCricket. “The good news is that we are seeing deeper, richer engagements built on the foundation of SMS.”
Mr. Harber said that HipCricket customers from last year, including large brands such as Jameson and Nestle, are increasing their investment this year.
“Mobile is working for them, and there are structural dynamics that need to be worked out, but we’re also getting new customers such as Arby’s, Dr. Pepper and Sunkist, which have moved from the experimentation stage in mobile to make it a part of their overall marketing mix, because they understand the power it can wield for their brand,” Mr. Harber said.
Brands still need to understand how advertising within messaging is purchased, because it is still too hard to buy today. Brands also need to be able to provision short codes quickly and easily, which currently takes months.
Despite these challenges, Mr. Harber believes that mobile will progress faster than the Internet did.
“ROI is super important, and fortunately mobile analytics are able to show and demonstrate ROI—mobile is very measurable,” Mr. Harber said. “If you think of a pyramid, start with a firm foundation, and the bottom foundation layer is SMS, because it has the broadest possible reach and you don’t have to change behavior because they’re already doing it.
“Start with that then layer the mobile Web or WAP on top, which doesn’t have as much reach but has richer engagement, then on the very top rich customized apps,” he said. “It’s important to use all of those together.”
Seeking to tap the potential of the mobile advertising pie, Way2SMS, a Hyderabad-based start up, is increasing its tie-ups with clients to offer services. The company, which offers free SMS to registered users, will also bring ads pertaining to the IPL cricket tournament, said Mr V.V. Raju, CEO. Having invested up to Rs 5 crore in the company launched in 2006-end, Way2SMS has 30 employees and plans to increase it to 60 by the end of 2008. It offers clients new mobile adver tising and branding opportunities, he told newspersons. Quoting industry sources, he said India’s total mobile subscriber base is 237 million. The mobile marketing pie is Rs 25 crore, but growing rapidly. In this encouraging scenario, the company plans to tap the emerging opportunities, Mr Raju said.
The company has been able to register over a million users and sends out over 13 million messages every month. It is working with diversified clients from banking, stock, airline and computer sectors.