Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Aircel, India’s fifth largest GSM mobile service provider with a subscriber base of over 47 million becomes the first telecom service provider to Launch 3G experience zone in Chennai for the consumers to get a first hand feel of third generation mobile telephony and its wonders. Aircel is now present in all 23 telecom circles. With a subscriber base of over 47 million, Aircel, is the fifth largest service provider.

Mr. Gurdeep Singh, Chief Operating Officer, Aircel said, “At Aircel we have always had a clear focus on the future and have diligently been the first to introduce, products and services that address relevant needs of the consumers be it the Aircel Pocket Internet, Aircel Pocket Apps store and the Aircel Apollo Mobile Health Care. It has been our constant and consistent endeavor to offer our consumers best in class on the Mobile anytime anywhere. The launch of 3G experience zones in Chennai is a step towards the same as it would equip our consumers and provide them first hands on experience on 3G services and open to them a world of possibilities.”

There will be four Aircel 3G experience zones spread across Chennai (Atrium2, Spencers Plaza; Fun City, Express Avenue; Atrium Citi Centre & Aircel Store PH road ) for the consumers to access and get to know what 3G is and what it can do for you. The consumers can walk in and they will be taken through the services available such as the Aircel IVVR (Interactive Video Voice Response), Aircel 3G PocketInternet portal and Video calls.

These services address all segments be it the youth, a housewife, a professional or a senior citizen. There is something for all which 3G addresses, with a 3G phone and access to the 3G network at the Aircel experience zone you can make peer to peer video calls; access the vibrant, colorful Aircel 3G PocketInternet portal with easy access to news, sports etc. ; and through the Aircel IVVR watch your favorite movie songs or dialogues of your favorite stars for e.g. Rajinikanth, Suriya, Vijay etc. At Aircel we shrink the world for you with a promise to offer you a world of possibilities anytime, anywhere.

Minkle, a mobile app development startup has launched their first flight booking app called Minkle Fly targetted at frequent flyers, business travelers. Minkle Fly is powered by Cleartrip i.e all the bookings are done through Cleartrip. Flight bookings are stored in app itself and beside flight booking user can cancel its flight booking from the app. Minkle Fly is integrated with  IVR payment gateway for safe and secure transaction

Minkle fly app is quite easy to use, its UI is refreshingly cool and highly intuitive. More than flight booking Mnkle fly enables user to book a radio cab to drop or receive you from the airport on booking a flight via Minkle Fly. Minkle fly also contains a feature built on top of Twitter called Minkle Airport which will encourage people to interact in the airport (Am i hearing dating )

Minkle fly app can be downloaded in a GPRS supported handset. User has to point to m.minkle.in in the phone browser to download the app. Minkle is one of “The Morpheus” portfolio company from batch 4 – 2010.

I personally liked the app, quite useful. But can it succeed in migrating users who book flight tickets from Cleartrip through their mobile phones without installing any app, Let’s wait and watch.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

MeraCareerGuide in partnership with Mospay has developed an mobile app called mInterview. mInterview is an interview centric application which you can download in an airtel phones . The interview application is designed in such a way that it would help the user to prepare for the interview. User can get tips in soft skills, technology related topics.

Airtel has selected mInterview as one of their best apps out of 70k apps in Airtel Appstore.

It’s a one-time download process and will cost you only Rs.25. Once it has been downloaded, you can use it any number of times to refer to the tips and steps to a successfulinterview. SMS app to 54321to receive the URL.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Nokia’s Ovi Store, the place where the owners of a Nokia smartphone can find a wide range of content available for download on their devices, is seeing increased popularity among users, the latest stats show. The software solutions portal is enjoying a number of around 1.6 million downloads every day, it offers support for over 100 devices (more than 60 of them being powered by the Symbian operating system), and users can access content from publishers from more than 80 countries.

The latest statistics on Ovi Store showing that the storefront offers support for 30 language variations, and that users can enjoy mobile billing with Ovi Store from 66 operators in 19 countries. Two thirds of the customers in these countries choose this payment method, it seems. 90 percent of Ovi Store visitors are able to use their local language, while 80 percent of them can make purchases from the portal using their local currency.

Among the other stats on Nokia’s Ovi Store, we can count the fact that Digital Chocolate has managed to reached over 4.5 million downloads, or that prominent devices in top downloading countries include touch-enabled handsets like N97, N97 Mini, 5800 XpressMusic, 5530 XpressMusic and X6, as well as non-touch ones like E66, E71 and E72. Nokia N900 is another phone that made it in the top 10 performing devices in the past weeks (in 3 of the top 10 most active countries).

China, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UK and Vietnam were nominated as the most active countries (in an alphabetical order).

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Onward Mobility, a mobile apps development company raises money from Mumbai Angels. After a long hiatus mobile space is attracting VCs now. Onward Mobility develops smart and cutting edge apps that transforms simple phones phones into something altogether different, giving them abilities they never had before. Their products basically addresses the every step of phone usage right from managing calls to tracking the lost phone. Onward Mobility products are branded as MOBI and they have mainly 4 kinds of products -

Product Name – Functionality

• MobiCop – Mobile security, Data Protection, Remote Monitoring, Lost Phone tracker

Mobile Apps store is also catching up in India. Witnessing the success of iPhone Apps all the major telecom players have launched their Apps in the market. Lets look at each of the respective App stores -

Airtel App Central is a centralized platform for downloading applications for your mobile from your mobile. It is an extended service offering of the Airtel Live services for mobile internet and appears integrated on the Airtel Live homepage. The Airtel Application Store contains about 1250 applications spread over 25 categories including apps for business, games, books, social networking and others which are intended at transforming your basic mobile phone to a versatile smartphone. Although many applications are free to download (note – network data charges may apply unless you are using an unlimited plan via Airtel GPRS), others are priced starting as low as Rs. 5 to Rs. 25. To access Airtel App Central, Airtel mobile customers can visit Airtel Live on their mobile phone and browse into App central or users can also sms ‘app’ to 54321 (toll free) to receive the URL or just type http://airtel.in/appcentral into the mobile browser

Vodafone recently launched their mobile App store in India phone.  Vodafone App Store presently offers over 800 applications covering entertainment, utility, finance, social networking, games. The company has categorized its Apps as Newest Apps, Top Apps and Just for You Apps offering customized set of applications as per consumer’s preference with ‘tabbed browsing’. A search engine simplifies the the process of locating the right Apps for users. Users keen to avail the App Stores can send a SMS to APP to 111 (toll free) and also access the store through the portal Vodafone live! by clicking a link on the home page. Over 15% of applications are available free of charge while the majority of paid applications are priced in the range of Rs. 5 to Rs. 30.

Reliance Communications, has announced the launch of its trendy new VAS application “Socially”, A 3G ready mobile phone application that bridges the gap between social networks and everyday mobile usage. Socially can be downloaded from RWorld and users can subscribe to it at Rs. 10 / 30 days without having to pay any additional browsing charges. The new application is designed to enable users to follow the recent activity of friends and to update their status on different social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn through a single client.  At present “Socially” is compatible with Symbian platforms and works well on LG and Samsung phones and also with phones running on Microsoft operating system (OS). Developed in partnership with Antarix Networks, a Singapore-based telecom start up which creates mobile communities Socially is extremely secure and brings a host of other interesting features such as alerts of friends’ activities on the idle phone screen.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com