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SMSONE: Micro-local news from India to make Silicon Valley jealous

Posted on November 30th, 2009 in Latest Info by Sarah Lacy

india-broadbandsign Of the hundreds of companies I meet in any given country, I only write about a handful. Sometimes it’s the ones that seem to be copying a US idea, but in reality are building their company in a completely unique—and frequently more profitable—way. Other times, I’m captivated by an idea that’s perfect for an emerging market, but probably wouldn’t work in the US.

But every once in a while I find a company that hits the trifecta: It’s addressing a big problem locally, it’s something I don’t think is offered in the US, and…. I want it. And when a product in undeveloped, chaotic, messy India can make someone in Silicon Valley feel jealous, you know that entrepreneur has come up with something good.

I’m talking about SMSONE Media, a company I met in Pune about a week ago. Like most of the impressive companies I saw in India, it’s aimed squarely at the base of the pyramid and is using basic SMS to deliver services to people some of India’s most unconnected areas. It was started by Ravi Ghate, who proudly points out that none of his core team graduated from high school, much less attended an IIT or IIM. (Typically not something you brag about in India.)

SMSONE is basically a very-local newsletter. Ghate goes to a village and scouts out an unemployed youth—preferably one who’s had jobs as a street vendor or has experience going door-to-door shilling for local politicians. The kid pays Ghate 1000 rupees (or about $20) for the “franchise” rights to be the local reporter for that village. He goes door-to-door singing up 1,000 names, phone numbers and other basic information, then mails the slips to Ghate. Ghate enters it all his databases and all those “subscribers” get a text introducing the kid as their village’s reporter. In India all incoming texts are free so, the subscribers don’t pay anything.

And what readers get is pretty powerful. Right now there is no way to get a timely message to people in a village. There’s no Internet access, no TV, no local paper, and frequently no electricity. All they have is a basic mobile phone. SMSONE’s service can give farmers instant updates about crop pricing or news of a seed or fertilizer delivery a town away. That means the farmer only makes the trip when he knows the shipment is there, rather than wasting days of travel hoping the shipment is there.

Consider something even more fundamental: Water. Much of the villages have government-owned water pipes that are turned on for an hour or so once a day, or even in some areas once a week. Everyone has to bring their vats, pitchers and empty kerosene cans and get as much water as they can while the pipes are on. But these pipes don’t really run on a schedule so people frequently miss getting the day or week’s water. Now, SMSONE subscribers get a text when the pipes are about to be turned on.

I know it’s not as life-changing, but I’d pay to get micro-local, highly relevant news about my neighborhood in San Francisco in 160-character bursts, whether it’s about a power or cable outage, a construction project that’s disrupting traffic or details on a shooting that just happened. And I might even welcome local ads that report a hot new restaurant opening or a sale at a boutique two streets over. I feel like modern, uber-connected life has made us less interested in “local news” as we used to think of it on a city or region level, but more interested in the micro-local, hence the excitement in the Valley around Foursquare, CitySourced, and a host of location-aware iPhone apps.

But the beauty of what Ghate has built is its simplicity. It doesn’t need a $300 smart phone and it doesn’t need GPS locators or a platform like Twitter to run on. Sometimes the most powerful innovation is built in the most extreme constraints.

I’m hardly the first to be impressed by what Ghate has created. He has won a host of awards including the Clinton Global Initiative’s YES Fund Award in 2008. And similar models are being built in parts of Africa where there’s similar mobile ubiquity and little else in the way of communications.

The change in life is not only pretty huge for subscribers. That once-unemployed kid suddenly has important local standing in his community. In addition to writing 160-character local news stories, he also sells local ads. Like a newspaper, Ghate enforces a ratio of ads to stories, so the news doesn’t get overrun by promotions.

The economics work out like this: Out of a 1000 rupee ad sale, 300 of it goes to the reporter, and Ghate pays him an additional 50 rupees for each news story. That adds up to a nice income for a village kid, but not so high that he picks up and moves to the big cities. Ambitious franchisees can even hire a few other reporters, expand their subscribers and make more money.

Right now Ghate’s operation is in 400 communities, reaching roughly 400,000 readers. He just got an investment from the government of Bangalore to boost that reach to five million readers in the next four months.

Ghate is clear that the money will be used strictly to reach more people. The company already breaks even and Ghate makes enough to pay his basic living expenses. He doesn’t care about fancy cars or clothes. It wasn’t too long ago that he was one of those disadvantaged kids, selling flags and berries on the side of the road and being told to go away. He still regularly travels between villages by bus and stays in $5/a night hotels. He’s promised to take me with him on my next trip to India, to see how the service works first hand and meet some of these young “reporters.”

“I’ll be back in February,” I said. “Will you have 5 million readers by then?”

“Not quite,” he said looking up at the ceiling, seemingly counting in his head. He looked down at me again, smiled and said, “Come in April.”

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Plancast Is Foursquare… For The Future

Posted on November 30th, 2009 in Latest Info by MG Siegler

If you’re going to leave your job at TechCrunch, you better have a good reason. I think Mark Hendrickson actually may have had one.

Hendrickson left TechCrunch in March. After about two years of writing and doing development for TC, he got the startup itch. He formed a company, Worldly Developments, and along with co-founder Jay Marcyes is now ready to unveil their project: Plancast.

As you can derive from the name, Plancast is a way to easily broadcast your plans to your online social circle. But a better way to think about it may be as a “Foursquare for the future,” which is how Hendrickson often describes it. The main idea is that while many people use Foursquare and similar location-based services like Gowalla and Loopt to share where they are, Plancast is about sharing where they will be.

Here’s a perfect example: On my main Plancast page right now, I see that Hendrickson, another former TC writer Nick Gonzalez, and current TCer Jason Kincaid are all going to spend the night in the woods together in early December. I don’t know why they’re doing it, but they’re broadcasting that they’re doing it. That’s something that you really need to plan a little bit for, so if I wanted to join (I would if there was a hotel nearby that I could stay in), I could do so and let them know with the click of a button.

But it’s not just about events that you need to plan for. In fact, it’s not really supposed to be about events. “We shy away from using the term “events” because we don’t feel it’s very appropriate for the scope of activity we’re trying to capture. While our users may be interested in posting more formal, organized parties and whatnot to Plancast (and we certainly encourage them to), we want them to also feel completely comfortable sharing more informal plans (getting drinks, seeing a movie, going to the zoo, traveling to new york for a week, attending a conference, etc),” Hendrickson tells us.

He goes on to note that there’s a real void in that particular area, and I agree. While services like Upcoming and Going allow you to broadcast future things you’ll be doing, they are very event-centric. If you’re just going to get a drink tomorrow night and want friends to join, it seems like overkill to create an Upcoming event for that, for example.

Likewise, Facebook and Evite allow you to make future plans, but both are still pretty formal and are based around the idea of the RSVP. With Plancast, you simply click on a friend’s event and if you want to tag along, you hit the “count me in” button, and you’re set. You can also comment on events, to get more information or share your thoughts on it.

The social graph of Plancast is also very simple. While you can sign up for a new Plancast account from scratch, they emphasize the idea of using with Facebook Connect or Twitter to sign-in and create an account. When you choose either of those, it’s easy to link up the other one (if you use both), to make for wide-ranging social graph. And that’s an important aspect to Plancast, the ability to broadcast these plans out. Once you add yourself to an event, it’s as simple as clicking on button to share it on Twitter or Facebook to let others know about it.

And the event creation process is extremely simple. Along the top of the Plancast page (above your friends’ stream) is an input box asking “What are you planning to do?” Clicking in this box reveals fields to enter the “what,” “when,” and “where” of the plan. The “when” and “where” fields are particular useful because upon entering something it will automatically look up both a date and a place that it assumes you meant. This helps avoid confusion — with the place in particular, as it uses Google Maps to show it on a map.

Going forward, mobile will be a key part of the service, Hendrickson says. He notes that they’re thinking about doing an iPhone app that can do things like alert you when you’re in the vicinity of a plan currently taking place or one that will be in the near future. He says that they’re also thinking about integrating Foursquare’s new API to create a service that offers the best of both worlds — what your friends are doing now and in the future. (It’s important to note, by the way, that while it may be described as ‘Foursquare for the future,’ Plancast has no gaming element…yet. Hendrickson is also thinking about that.)

Likewise, Plancast wants to integrate with the some of the calendaring services to make it easy for people to use no matter your planner of choice. Facebook Events will be a key part of this, as will Google Calendar (which recently started testing a more social element of its own). And there is a plan for an Plancast API so other services can import and use their data.

The Facebook integration is key for Plancast. The service was borne out of Facebook’s fbFund ‘09 initial winners (its codename was Magellen at that point), and they’ve received a micro-seed round from that so far. The next step is to raise a proper seed round, Hendrickson says.

So how does Plancast build a business out of this? Hendrickson notes that they’ve already begun talking to venues about how Plancast could benefit them, such as getting people to organize events at certain places. The venues themselves may also be able to post Plancasts when they have specials coming up on a certain night, for example. This is similar to what Foursquare is thinking about, but again, for the future.

Currently, all plans shared on Plancast are public, but soon they will roll out a feature to allow you to share certain plans just with select friends, we’re told. There is also a plan to have friend groups/lists to futher make it easier to share plans with only certain people.

I’ve been using Plancast for several weeks now, and it’s a solid service and idea. Hendrickson and Marcyes have managed to keep it simple (which I appreciate) while adding funtionality that differentiates it from competitors. The trick will be convincing people that they need to use yet another information sharing service in their life. But if I’m say, going to happy hour tomorrow and want to share information such as exact location, and time without going over 140 characters, while seeing who else is interested, this is a great solution. I do think this fills a need.

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Google Names Winners Of Second Android Developer Challenge

Posted on November 30th, 2009 in Latest Info by Jason Kincaid

Google has just annouced the winners of its second Android Developer Challenge, a competition that looks to spur development on the Android platform by offering large cash grants to the winners. Thirty prizes were given out in total, with the top 3 winners from each of ten categories taking home $100,000, $50,000, or $25,000 respectively, with 3 overall winners walking away an additional $150,000, $50,000, or $25,000.

The top winner overall was SweetDreams, an app that helps you send late night calls straight to voicemail and automatically conserves battery power by turning off features like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi at night. Second overall was What the Doodle!?, an app that’s like an online multiplayer version of Pictionary. And third prize overall went to WaveSecure, a security/backup app that lets you track your phone’s current location, lock it down or remote wipe your phone, and backup/restore data.

You can see a full list of the winners, along with their descriptions here. Of course, if you’re at your computer you can’t browse Android Market to learn more, because it still lacks a presence on the desktop.

200 finalists for the contest were announced earlier this month. To choose these, Google developed a special Android voting app for the contest; the top 20 apps from each of 10 categories were selected as finalists. To determine the winners, Google again allowed users to vote using the app. User votes accounted for 40% of the final tally, with votes from official Google judges weighted at 60%.