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Press Release
9 January 2009, The Financial Express, Chandigarh
myAlerts all set to connect frequent travellers
Are you a frequent traveller? Is your family always worried about your whereabouts? Such out roamers have a reason to sit back and relax now!
A message alerts service called ‘myAlerts’ developed by Goldfinch Mobile Solutions can keep the frequent travellers’ dear ones apprised of their location via automated SMSes. The moment the subscriber enters a new country; those in his core group list will get an automated SMS about his location.
Unlike, the services available via banks or airlines where the customer gets alerts on making transactions or about flying offers respectively, this value added services can reach out to a group of people whom the subscriber wants to keep informed about his location.
Also, those availing the service can save money on making international calls or sending messages manually to their Indian counterparts. Goldfinch, the Hong Kong based provider of value added services, has set up an R & D centre at IT Park Chandigarh and the product has been developed in the Chandigarh centre after six months of research.
“We have got a positive response from majority of out roamers with whom we interacted. We are in talks with mobile operators like Aircel and Idea, Maxis in Malaysia and Telkomsel in Indonesia to sell this product,” Newton Bubber, CEO of Goldfinch informed FE.
“Six months of R&D has gone into developing this product at our Chandigarh centre. Initially the targeted customers will be international travelers. The subscription cost of this service will be kept in the range of Rs 50-100 per month for Indian customers. We expect that the service can generate additional revenue of upto Rs 60 Crore for the operators within a year,” he further added.
The service can be subscribed by IVR, SMS or USSD channel. It has easy mechanism to upload the numbers in data bank of customer. “We will also pitch this product to other players like Airtel, Vodafone and Reliance soon,” said Newton.
The company with operations in Malaysia and Indonesia plans to invest close to $1.5 million into its operations across south-east Asia within two years. Newton added, “Though, the recession has impacted our projects in India but we expect to break even by the end of 2009. Moreover, a major portion of our investment will go into IVR-myMusic service this year. We are also adding new features to this product, which include WAP client and creating web communities for myMusic subscribers. myMusic generated close to Rs 1,000 crore of revenue last year for mobile operators.”
Mobile advertising is another segment, which Goldfinch is exploring. The company has entered into understanding with Nokia to introduce aggressive advertising campaigns on mobile through IVR and WAP. “We are also exploring new countries like Thailand and Vietnam for extending our services,” Newton said.
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