Now, we are seeing a plethora of Indian mobile handset vendors, and they are coming up with really interesting products, tailored for India. And they are competing with multinationals by supporting innovative features.

Here is a sample:

Currency checker: Videocon Model V1300 supports ultraviolet ray based currency checker! With counterfeit notes proliferating, this is indeed a very useful feature for merchants and traders. Intex IN 5030 also supports this

Large SMS memory: Indians love sending SMS and number of stored SMS was a limitation. Now many Indian mobiles liberally support large SMS sizes. Many Videocon, Karbonn mobiles support 1000+ SMSes in memory!

LED torch: We have seen Nokia entry level mobile supporting a LED light. With our deplorable power situation, I think LED torch should be part of all Indian mobiles . Many Desi mobiles support LED flash, not just the low end mobiles (Videocon V1306, V1402, V204, V1420) and so on..

Dual SIM: This is again a peculiarly Indian feature that enables having 2 phone numbers on a phone. Many vendors like Karbonn, Videocon support this. Intex has gone even further with a triple SIM! (2 GSM+1CDMA!) and with dual batteries for longer life.

Single touch Facebook/Twitter: We all know how India is emerging as a major FB/Twitter nation. India already has 8 million facebook users . Micromax has realized this and its Q5fb has with a single key operation for Facebook! Another Micromax model Bling not only supports all IM clients and Facebook, but also doubles as a compact vanity mirror for the woman on the move!!

Mobile tracker: This is a security feature for the mobile.  If a person tries to change the SIM card in a stolen mobile, it automatically sends a SMS to a preconfigured number with the new SIM card number and IMEI number. Many desi mobiles support this

Loud audio: Anyone who has traveled in a unreserved train would know how people enjoy putting their mobile in loud mode and enjoy their favorite songs or FM station. To support this, many of our Desi mobiles support powerful speakers on mobiles.

TV-out feature: This allows a person to connect a mobile to a TV and show the pictures taken by the phone to the family without having the hassle of connecting to PC or sending as MMS.. Micromax X500 is one such mobile!

It looks like interesting times for Indian Mobile vendors as they try to attack the gaps in offerings of Nokias, Sonys with India specific features and needs.!! Keep looking out!!!

Tata has introduced a new range of water purifiers called “Swach”, which means Clean in Hindi. What is great about it?

It meets the following design goals:

• Meet the tough US Food and Drug Administration standards
• Provide safe drinking water at the point of consumption
• Work in places that don’t have running water and electricity
• Be as simple to operate as an electric bulb

Tata Chemicals innovation center scientists have met the goals, but have also made the price point at Rs 750-900 ($15-$20). They have used rice husk as a filter which is available locally in plenty. They hope to roll out 1 million of these filters in India in next year.

In a poor country like India, lack of potable water and its effects on health are well known. Towns and cities have nominal water supply schemes, but villages are simply untouched. Here is where Swach will be successful – it is a product that can be installed in house, needs no running water, needs no electricity and is affordable.

Different group companies of Tata like Tata chemicals, TCS, Titan have worked on the project for four years to bring out this product.

Swach is a feather in cap of Tatas, certainly a better feather than Nano!

The concept is similar to a mailing list. A user can go to Google Labs site and find the various channels of interest to him. Different channels are available under categories like Business, BuyandSell, education, entertainment, health, jobs and so on. If one has google account, he/she can join a channel of their interest by giving the mobile number and subscribe to the channels. If there are messages posted to that channel, they will come as a message to the subscriber.

A subscriber can also join the SMS channels without going to the Google Channels site by sending ON <name of the channel> to 9870807070. One can manage the subscriptions of different channels from mobile.

The service is free and allows upto 10 free messages from the channel owner per day. Subscriber can send a message to the channel by typing SEND <name of channel> <message> from the mobile or go to the website and post a message.

Setting up and tearing down a channel is quite fast for the channel owners. Channel owner can send invites to mobile numbers of friends.

Google lists all channels sorted by active users wise and provides a search box (what else do you expect in a Google site?)

I explored the service and here is my experience:

• It is very easy to create channel and set up invites to your friends
• The latency time of message delivery is not predictable. Sometimes, it took hours to get the message. Sometimes, it comes pretty fast.
• Works fine with indian languages.
• One can search for channels and find the ones that interest you

The great advantages of the service are :

• It is free
• Supports unlimited users and many Indian languages
• Subscriber does not need an internet account to use the service.

Though the service is impressive and free, there are some wrinkles. Many channels seem to be inactive – it looks like they were setup for experimenting and then left to rot. There are multiple channels for same service and many are stale. For example, I found 4 channels for Bangalore weather and all of them are inactive, though all of them claim to give daily update of Bangalore weather. Google can avoid showing inactive channels. This will help remove the clutter.

On the whole, Google SMS channels is a powerful, free service from Google India. Keep looking for interesting uses of the service!

Pluggdin reported that a Mangalore based startup has built a product called Mozziquit, a mosquito trap that supposedly kills female biting mosquitoes.

It is reported in that article that Mozziquit is a light weight product and claims to work well within a hurdle free radius of 160 sq. ft and consumes only 12W power. What’s interesting about the product is that it’s a lifetime investment (you don’t need to refill anything) and the operating cost per day is as low as 25 paise. Article says that it is expected to cost Rs 1000 in market in few months time. It also has a picture of the product.

I did some googling but could not find much information on company, technology or the inventors. Looks too good to be true! Anyone having information on the product, please ping me!

iHot is the company that is selling this service. Though solar water heater technology has been in existence for sometime, it has not got market penetration. High initial cost is one of the reasons. If you want to get a good solar heater, do the plumbing, it will pull you back by at least Rs 30000. Also, the hassles of maintaining is high.

Here is where iHot scores. ihot installs the solar heater and takes care of its maintainance. The customer pays just for the hot water they consume in a month. The company claims that for a family of two, it will cost Rs 80-150 per month. The service is promised till 2030. The service is from Anu solar, who has been in solar heater business for years

Many industries are undergoing the transition from capex to opex orientation. In software industry, business models like SaaS enables customers to pay only for the usage. Opex based business models make the mass acceptance of products in the market place easier as there is no capital outlay.

If ihot is able to live up to their promise, it will revolutionize the solar heater industry.

The concept is simple: Instead of selling bottle of shampoo for Rs50, sell a 5ml sachet for Rs 1. For most of the users, shampoo is not a daily use item like toothpaste. Why should the user spend Rs50 for such infrequent use? The sachet is perfect solution. Pay less (Rs 1) and buy only when needed.

How does the shampoo company benefit? The volumes are much higher as the price points are low driving affordability. Rural markets love this model. Now one can see so many things sold in sachets – like Parachute coconut oil, Rin soap and even Fair and Lovely!

Now Reliance wants to copy same business model for Mobile VAS. Instead of shelling out Rs 30 per month on ring tones, the user can pay Rs 1 per day.

I think this perfectly matches their customer profile – 85% of their customer profile is prepaid and of lower denomination. The customers would love to move to this model and we can expect the same success story of shampoos and soaps getting repeated in mobile VAS!

The schedule is typically written on a sheet and tracking the dates is difficult. Some vaccines are due after 45 days, some at 3 months and some at 6 months so on. When my kids were young, we used to regularly look at the sheet every week so that we dont miss any shots.

Now, there is a simple way to do it – Goto Vaccidate and register the birth date of your baby. It will send a reminder on SMS or email on the due date with the detail of the vaccine . I think it is a simple and wonderful service and it will ensure that vaccines are not skipped or delayed.

I have a request to Vaccidate: Allow the registering of birth date through a SMS, in addition to the website. This will broad base the usage and more people will benefit.

I wanted to understand how the technology works. After some googling, I found a company, right here in Bangalore, working on a similar technology! It is called Ubona. Here is what they say about their product – ” Would it not be great if your end customer could just pick up his phone and ask for something to get done – it could be a dealer he wants to connect to, a new TV channel that he’d like to subscribe, latest stock market trends that he’d like to check, booking that he needs to make, a song that he’d like to download and so on.

In principle, voice is the ultimate no-brainer interface – and a perfect fit with a all kinds of conceivable information and content services ranging from directory assistance to content search.”

Though the website is not listing Airtel as their customer, it looks like technology was sourced from a company like Ubona or another company in the same space. It is a technology called “Voice SMS” and looks a combination of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and triggering of some action in the backend.  Ubona claims that its technology works well for Indian accents . It must be a real challenge as there are so many “Indian accents” like Mallu, Bihari and so on! I am also not sure how good is the recognition rate.. May be some Airtel users can share their experience!

They have set up a trial number 4070 0000 in Bangalore which “connects to the hotel” if you “tell the name of the hotel”.  I tried Leela, Shanthi sagar and Little Italy – system recognized them but failed for Baghini.

One can think of multiple uses for the Voice SMS technology  -  If you have a waitlisted ticket, you can tell the PNR number and can get the status read out without navigating an IVR system. You want to order a pizza from nearby Pizza Hut,  it can connect you to the place. You can tell name of nearest provision store, get connected and order goods.

I hope to see many more innovative and useful applications in coming days!!

http://125.17.140.50/BPSFineDetails/BPSFineDetails.aspx

You go there, type in your vehicle number and you can see if you have any traffic violations against your vehicle. It shows the date/time, type of violation and the fine. It is available in English and Kannada. It looks like the traffic cops upload their information about cars jumping signals and speeding lorries to a central system and it gets published.

One suggestion is to send a SMS to the vehicle owner, so that the person gets to know his violation immediately. The system can also share the information to the insurance companies! If you are a bad driver, you can see a jump in insurance premium when it comes for renewal!! This will be a wonderful incentive to a better driving.

By the way, I found that I owed Rs 100 for jumping a signal one month back and I paid it through the Bangalore one online service