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Dheeksha Rabindra
BANGALORE: US-based Xora, location-based mobile resource management solution provider, has partnered with Garmin Ltd, to provide audible turn-by-turn direction on GPS phones.
“Punch in the source and destination address on your GPS enabled mobiles and voice would guide one through turn-by-turn till the destination is reached. Voice navigation is a value added services to its GPS Time Track solution,” Pramod Jajoo, managing director, Xora, told CyberMedia News.
With Xora GPS Time Track solution, companies can easily and inexpensively track and record start times and the location of their mobile employees through their GPS-enabled mobile phone. Their regular activities and location are automatically tracked and recorded.
To deliver its services, Xora has tied-up with service providers and charges on the basis of pay per user per month model, charging $12 to 25 according to the usage. In the long run the company is planning to tie up with mobile equipment manufacturers to provide its services.
Talking about the market maturity, Jajoo said that GPS enabled mobile penetration in the US is stabilized unlike India. They are in talks with few national telecom service providers to introduce its services in India and they have expressed interest for the same. However, he added that in India the telecom service providers are still in the land grab mode and are looking at increasing their subscriber base. Further, the GIS infrastructure in India is not well developed, he added.
In trying to acquire customers quickly the ARPU is going down. In order to increase ARPU and provide compelling solutions to the subscribers, the service providers have to start to look beyond voice services. We hope they will start rolling out data services and we are looking forward to capitalizing on that demand. We also see more interest in location-based services in coming year and the phone becoming a business productivity tool, said Jajoo.
The company has raised $30 million through VC funding in seven years. Of the total 175 employees in the company, around 100 are based in the Bangalore centre. The entire product development and customer support team is based in Bangalore.
© CyberMedia News
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