September 3, 2009

RockeTalk: The SmartTechie
Date:   Thursday , September 03, 2009

Every morning Rahul Johri, an engineering student, used to turn off the alarm and go back to sleep. But he doesn't have to do it anymore. He jumps out from bed hearing his mom's voice, "Rahul, time to get up!" or if he ignores it he gets five extra minutes. Bang, five minutes later, it is mom again, "Beta, you are getting late!" But mom is in Muradabad while Rahul is in Boston. Well, mom just used RockeTalk's Buzz feature to wake Rahul up. She knows she can go on sending him a buzz till he actually gets up and sends her a message telling her that he is awake.

'Guys, kya chal raha hai?' (Guys, what is going on?) says a sleepy voice. Meet Deepak, another student who turned on RockeTalk while still in bed, not wanting to start the day without his friends. Or Saniya from Hyderabad, who logs on every day and talk for hours with her fiancé who is in Kuwait. They both have fun with their common friends on RockeTalk - playing antaakshari and celebrating birthdays and festivals.

Armed with Internet or GRPS enabled cell phones, these folks discovered RockeTalk, the mobile social entertainment application, that enables them to take advantage of the full multimedia capability of the phone using voice, pictures, videos, and text. It helps them stay connected with their family and friends spread all over the world in a very personal way, while making new friends and having a jolly good time listening to and participating in realtime mushairaas (Urdu poetry readings), serious discussions, or light-hearted chatter on RockeTalk's communities.

Just a decade back this kind of realtime interaction on mobile would have seemed to be a myth, but now RockeTalk makes it easy for families to stay connected even when they are far. It helps them to go beyond the basic phone call or SMS and send voice, videos, pictures, and more. With RockeTalk, a mom can see what her son or daughter is eating in the hostel, actually 'see' their friends; for the military families and others who are away from home RockeTalk closes the distance, instantly connecting them at the click of a button. The two-way communication is done using a phone at both the ends without the need for a computer.

The visionary behind RockeTalk, Rajiv Kumar, an IIT Mumbai alumnus, found the need to take wireless communication to the next level. After the success of his previous startup Widcomm (acquired by Broadcom), Kumar wanted to take wireless communication beyond short range, beyond carriers, and international boundaries, where people could talk to each other, share experiences, and learn from each other creating a true sense of a global community. "The idea was to bring down the language barriers, allowing users to move away from text and interact in their own voice in the language they are comfortable in. Be it general chatting, telling jokes, showing off their skills in voice or video, or playing antaakshari, everyone can be a star using an app in the mobile," says Kumar, CEO, RockeTalk.

Kumar is betting high on a market, which was nascent two years back in India. According to an IDC report, the mobile social networking application market, which stood at $46.8 million in 2006, is expected to grow to $428.3 million by 2009, creating a new application segment and establishing social networking as a new communications tool used for many purposes including consumer socializing. Close to 400 million people in India now own mobile phones, and significant opportunities for content providers and service providers are available to generate MVAS revenues in this nascent market. In fact, 15-20 percent of these mobiles are Internet equipped. The number of Indians using their mobiles to log on to the Internet has increased from 16 million in 2006 to about 40 million now. The trend is that the number of mobile Internet users is 14 times more than that of broadband users.

For most Indian users, their first true Internet experience is not on a computer but on their 'own' mobile phone. Seeing this growing trend coupled with mobile penetration with better data connectivity, RockeTalk is preparing and continuously polishing its product to provide the users with a mobile experience they will truly enjoy. Available worldwide, the San Diego based RockeTalk has taken into account the needs unique to the users from the Indian subcontinent by observing user behavior and taking input directly from its large user base, while creating and fine tuning its features. In fact, Kumar saw an opportunity in Indian psyche where people, given the opportunity, like to talk, socialize, sing, tell jokes and want to express themselves and be heard.

The application provides an end-to-end social network offering with an easy user interface and a number of functionalities for users to create, mash-up, share, and post mobile content in a social setting. Unlike the usual social networking applications, RockeTalk enables users to be as open and expressive as they want and express themselves with voice, pictures, and video. The application also includes a multiple Instant Messenger (IM) chat feature compatible with Yahoo, GoogleTalk, MSN, AIM, and ICQ. A single login into RockeTalk connects the users with all their friends across the various messengers.

The impact created among the users by the startup's app is interesting. Nanda Kishore, a 28-year-old software programmer in Noida, has been using it for nearly eight months and finds himself addicted to the service. "I was traveling a lot when I heard about RockeTalk through a friend. I have been a regular user of the application since then as it helps me stay connected 24x7, no matter where I am. What I really like about it is that it allows you to configure instant messengers on your cell. I start chatting with my friends in the U.S. at around 9 pm IST every night and easily spend around five hours on my phone," says Kishore. Currently, RockeTalk receives 2,500 sign ups daily and has 3.5 lakh active users.

In a giant leap in the field of mobile social networking in terms of reaching out to the users and targeting the emerging user oriented market, RockeTalk has tied up exclusively with Indiatimes 58888 for ad sales and mobile content on its latest version, which provides photos, videos, text and voice messages, and multimedia content download for mobile, in addition to the Instant Messenger (IM) chat feature. Users can download the content by typing in m.rocketalk.com on their mobile phone browser. While RockeTalk can now reach out to the readymade pool of the vast Indiatimes network, the latter will have an add-on to its content sharing service. The fact that RockeTalk enables the user to access end-to-end social entertainment on any GPRS-enabled mobile may be a potential challenge to the Blackberry. However, Kumar finds some bottlenecks and he says, "To create awareness among the people is a major challenge." But this does not stop him. To break this hurdle and to win over a large mind share of the consumers, the company is in talks with many mobile phone manufacturers. As a part of the tie up, LG and Samsung phones are already coming with preloaded RockeTalk application. The application is already compatible with 450 phone brands globally. The pre-loaded app strategy by RockeTalk, though a great one, does not necessarily mean that usage of the app would rise; as just because the app is on the phone it doesn't mean people use it. But, most people will agree that users who download an app are far more likely to use the app than those who buy it with the phone. The company has tied up with LG and Samsung phones, which have a fair share in the Indian market, aiming to create a buzz.

Headquartered in California, and with a branch office in Delhi, the company has raised $7.6 million in funding to date. The mobile app startup with its 48 employees is in the race to create awareness among the masses and is working on strategic partnerships with phone manufacturers as well as media companies. Kumar says with a lot of positive energy, "We are expecting to have over five million active users. We now begin a new era of interactive mobile entertainment to reach the masses globally - going far beyond the old-school advertising - and are building a multimedia brand relationship with the masses. RockeTalk is the first multimedia entertainment company that leverages the social setting with engagement and active participation from the users. With RockeTalk's voice, video, and picture capability, it hopes to be the best in the mobile social media."