BANGALORE, INDIA: asklaila, a local information service provider, announced a strategic partnership with Airtel.

The partnership enables Airtel customers to get up-to-date information, free of cost, through asklaila’s extensive city information database. The asklaila-powered ‘Airtel city search’ will reach more than 30 million users across the six cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Bangalore.

Airtel thus pioneered to be the first telecom company in the world to deploy a multi-mode, multi-platform local search service; the service is available across three screens – the mobile (Airtel’s mobile service), the PC (Airtel’s broadband service) and the TV (Airtel DTH); and within the mobile service, across four modes – SMS, USSD, WAP and Airtel Live.

Sanjay Gupta, chief marketing officer, mobile services, Bharti Airtel, said: "The mobile-based local information search will be supported by targeted, relevant advertising, based on the users’ intent identified through the search query. It is Airtel and asklaila’s joint belief that a non-intrusive, intent-driven advertising model, with the consumer in mind, is the way forward on the mobile platform. This partnership has the potential to revolutionise the market dynamics in mobile advertising.”

Kiran Konduri, co-founder, asklaila, said, “We have seen tremendous growth in the usage of our service and having telecom leader Airtel as our partner will help us reach many more users, besides giving a significant fillip to mobile advertising and the use of mobile devices to search for city information.”

The multi-mode mobile version of Airtel city search, powered by asklaila, effectively addresses two major challenges - providing accurate, credible and actionable local information; and ground-up mobile-specific enhancements to leverage the advantage of multiple mobile modes.

This partnership will enable users’ phones across price ranges – from an entry level Rs. 2,000 handset to a high-end, feature rich Rs. 35,000 mobile phone.