The third business in Netcore is mobility. In this, the primary focus has been around SMS, but in recent times, we have been working to widen the portfolio of services on offer to businesses.
We had started with a consumer-centric SMS content service (MyToday SMS) about five years ago. We hoped to monetise the free SMS sent out through ads tagged on at the end. That did not quite work out as we had thought. We then leveraged the same platform for enterprise SMS services.
Businesses sent out three kinds of messages: transactional (alerts, primarily), updates to their existing customer base, and promotional and marketing messages to a mobile number database for leads and new customer acquisition. In common parlance, we are an “SMS Aggregator” – buying capacity in bulk from mobile operators and value-adding in the sale to enterprises.
Over the past couple months, the changes initiated by TRAI to curb telemarketing have impacted this business. While SMS remains the primary way to reach consumers in India on their mobile, we are exploring additional options in the mobile space to get growth back to this business line. The acquisition of Ravience was a step in this direction.
Continued tomorrow.
