There are certain things a startup can do, while biggies cannot.
Few biggies tried implementing the SMS-based group messaging system, but most of them met with failure.
On the other hand, ActiveMobs, a Bangalore based group messaging product has garnered 28000 users within a few months of launch!
Presenting to you, our interview with Akshat Choudhary, co-founder of ActiveMobs .
If you have any questions/comments for Akshat/his team, please leave them in comment section/or mail me.
Please share what exactly is ActivMobs all about?
Activ Mobs brings group chat to SMS. Traditional sms communication is peer-to-peer where as a major part of our daily conversation is group oriented. We believe that Activ Mobs is successfully addressing this and presents an easy and dependable solution to users.
Now when you want to send a message to a group of friends, you just send it to activ and it will be forwarded to your friends. The really cool part is that when someone replies, it again reaches everyone in the group. Hence everyone is on the same page.
www.inactiv.com is our website where you can find much more information about ActivMobs.
Please tell us more about the founding team.
We are 3 of us.
* Sidu – We have been friends from school and have learnt how to program together. He is a Techie who also works for Thoughtworks.
* Vidit – He is my brother. He is currently doing his Chartered Accountancy. He is really amazing at Marketing and Business Development.
* Akshat(myself) – I am a techie too and the chief inactivist.
Why did you choose the word- “inactiv”?
www.inactiv.com is a pun on the word activ. It also in ways symbolizes my laziness 
. By the way we could not afford the ‘e’ making it inactiv.
You guys launched ActivMobs when Yahoo! was closing mixd – what made you stick around and execute on the idea?
We had launched ActivMobs in the last week of November’ 2006. It was one week before Yahoo mixd was launched. Though the mixd pilot was shutdown in February, we on the other hand have seen some excellent adoption.
The initial usage, positive response and patronizing was much better than what we had estimated and its only been growing exponentially since then. The adopti
on of the product is really driving us. Also we can see a whole lot of possibilities which are yet to be explored.
Globally, SMS -based groups haven’t succeeded well – why do you think inactiv has a strong chance (in the Indian market)?
The utility of group chatting to organize/inform is obvious, but what really drives the usage is the FUN aspect of group messaging. I think our ability to drive this aspect definitely gives us an edge. It is still to early to say that group messaging has not succeeded globally. We believe that SMS is still the easiest thing to do on your mobile phone after maybe calling. It appears to remain so for at least the next few years given its ubiquity.
If possible, please share your user base/usage statistics?
Our service is currently available all over Karnataka. We have over 28000 users using our service on a daily basis. They have formed over 8000 groups. We are sending out over 55000 messages a day. This service has grown virally, and one of the stats we like to use is that we would personally know less than 100 of our users.
How do you plan to monetize the service?
Like any other web2.0 company we are also looking at advertising to drive our revenues
We have run a couple of ad campaigns and have seen some excellent response.
What sort of partnerships are you looking at?
Right now we have our heads down at improving the product.
Please share your funding status. Are you looking for funding?
We are self funded until now. We all hold jobs. Right now we have seen great traction and are ready to take the system to the next level.
If possible, please share your future plans – products/features that inactiv is working on.
We had recently launched a service wherein our user gives us his birthday and his/her friend receives a reminder on the birthday.We have a few other features in the pipeline, but we have some more work to put into those areas.
tags: activemobs
Thanks Ashish for the interview. I am sure this will help us to reach out to an entirely different market segment.
this is a good way of doing things a day job and your venture . i like these guys.
i first come across this concept while looking at http://www.3jam.com .a Uk based company .this concept do have some value .unlike Twitter which is more of a fun and Cool thing . sadly all the cool thing are hyped by media not the one who produce value [think paris hilton] .
i can see a lot of revenue model possible for any such service . with little back end integration with Enterprise software there can be a good way to interact with field force . iam sure there team is working on that .
To Inactiv Folks – Few good wishes towards your success. Its only a matter of fact that the ‘Hazaron Qhwaishein’ I had, one of the Idea was this, I liked the simplicity in idea.
Ashish – I wonder how do you manage all this good stuff with the job. Hat were already off, now one feather out of it for you.
Great post and great idea. More than that I love the activemob blog. I like the friendly feel of a web 2.0 startup and believe services that can achieve that make it big. Activemob in my opinion does that really well. I see a lot of stuff from the “getting real” book being applied here.
BTW, I am also working on website for music learners and professionals called http://www.muziboo.com … this should surely serve as an inspiration to us !
@ Prashant: Great idea. You actually opened up new areas for groub-based sms products.
:):)
@ Piyush – Thanks for your kind kind words
@ Prateeek: I looked at muziboo – wondering how will you control piracy?
You can mail me at ashishk.sinha@gmail.com
@Ashish
Just got back to your site after long. The new look rocks. I am sure you will bring in more subtle changes with time. !!
@Akshat.
Inactiv or Activ Mobs its great.
I have one addition which you might want to implement at a later stage.
I am talking of the context of an SMS. That is if I send an SMS to the group and some one replies to it after some time or after some messages which originate from a different source, their should be way to bind the conversations.
(Do you already have it??)
Simple Idea, Great Execution, wishing all the luck to Activ Mobs,
and ashish, its really amazing, you are able to play dual roles
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