‘What Hotmail did to email,JaxtrSMS will do to texting’

First,phone companies were charging a lot of money for texting,where it should be free. Second,it is a very similar model to Hotmail,so it is exciting for me to replicate. What Hotmail did to email is exactly what JaxtrSMS is doing to texting. And,third,is the opportunity for us to get a large subscriber base globally and create a virtual network for communications without really being an operator ourselves.

Mobile firms make a lot of money out of messaging. How do you plan to work with them?

The model for JaxtrSMS is similar to Skype. Mobile firms did not pose a problem for Skype. I don’t think they can do anything to us. They’ll start making revenues out of their data plan,internet browsing charges,etc.

Research in Motion faced issues here with their confidential and closed messaging system…

Yes,I know. We will comply with whatever the Trai asks us to do. No hacker can break into what we are doing. We will comply by the 200 messages a day rule. Why should Trai be worried about our revenue model? It allows Google’s data transfer through its website,and ours is a similar model.

Your application will be downloaded by a lot of telemarketing firms as well…

We have explicitly refused people from using us for marketing purposes. Since we have control over every user,we can cut his SMS connection whenever required. We allow only person-to-person messaging. We will limit users to a certain number in a group for a single message.

Experts expect a bubble burst in e-commerce due to expensive valuations. Your opinion?

I don’t think we are at a point of crazy valuation because,this time around,many companies are generating real revenues. For example,the internet and mobile audience have matured. Ten years ago,e-commerce was an experiment. Today,it is a way of life. People are actually buying: Amazon,Flipkart are selling.

Even in JaxtrSMS,you are expecting that people will join in,they haven’t done that yet…

There are all indications that it’ll grow. For example,in the first two weeks,we were sending only to 20-30 people and now we are talking thousands. If we get around 50 million Indian users by next year,we’ll be happy.

You got $400 m for hotmail. Do you expect similar valuations for JaxtrSMS?

If we can get 100 million subscribers,I think we can get it.

You do expect to make a similar decision like Hotmail?

I can’t make that decision for you now. At that point in time,whatever is the best business model,we will follow. But the intention right now is to grow this company and make it successful.

What will be your revenue generators?

We will earn revenues by providing premium services like multimedia message service. Polling could be another way of generating revenues and,then,we have advertisements. We will do nothing to alter the sanctity of just text message.

What growth target have you set for JaxtrSMS?

We expect the company to grow 100x in the next five years because right now we have only started. Because by the end of this year,we are targeting only a million customers; by end of next year,it should be 100 million.