Your 'Search' ends here!

In the ever-evolving Internet market, Yahoo! India, one of the pioneers in the online space unveiled its latest search offering — oneSearch Short Message Service (SMS) for its Indian users. This service is setting to augment the already existing oneSearch WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) product in the country and with this service available in all major telecom operators in the country, oneSearch SMS seems to be the next solution for those millions of mobile users who utilize the SMS platform to procure information and stay in touch.

Prasad Ramasubramanian from CyberMedia News caught up with Manish Dalal, senior director, Mobile Products at Yahoo! India, to know more. Excerpts from the interview:

CMN: Could you explain the rationale behind bringing in a service of this nature?

Manish Dalal: Yahoo! oneSearch is an entirely new search service that is specially designed for the millions of mobile phone users, providing consumers better results and instant answers. This would actually change the way consumers’ access and use the Internet content and services on their mobile phones.

Given the way the mobile market is growing and with most of the users utilizing SMS as the main platform to communicate and share their views and with Yahoo! having consistently provided quality offerings for their users, I feel that oneSearch SMS service is the need of the hour.

CMN: With every product and service aiming to become simpler and easier to use for the target audience, how have you addressed this in your offering?

MD: The product offering from Yahoo! is catering to the search requirements of a user on a mobile. As stated earlier, it would give instant answers for each search query that you as a user would have. There is absolutely no need to sift through bunch of links to find out what you are looking for. It’s easy to read.

CMN: How does oneSearch SMS work?

MD: All you have to do is --- send a search query to 58242. For example, send an SMS to 58242 with the city name – say Mumbai and you get an SMS back giving you the details of the weather. If you type a company name (say Infosys), it gives you a stock quote of that particular company. Again, if you type a news topic, it gives back a news article. And we don’t just constrain our user with just an SMS experience but take him/her to the website links too.

CMN: Where have you listed these services so far?

MD: We have the local business listings across the metro cities such as Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore currently and as I speak, there would be more cities that would be added into this.

CMN: Yahoo! had already introduced this service in the WAP platform sometime back, how has it performed?

MD: The oneSearch platform was launched almost nine months ago and the idea was to give our users a cluster of information. Yahoo! has dramatically improved oneSearch experience by introducing new content cluster, which includes local business listings, flight status and Yahoo! Answers. The entire idea is to provide relevant information to you and you as an intelligent user decide what is best for you!

CMN: What would be cost of the SMS?

MD: It entirely depends on the operator. For instance, for Vodafone, it must be costing you about Rs. 3 per SMS. So, it basically depends on the operator.

CMN: Could you talk about the revenue sharing with your operator?

MD: SMS sharing is the same as its already existing in the market.

CMN: One of your competitors Google is also into a similar service, do we see this as a reaction to them?

MD: Launching this service has been a part of our development cycle and it’s just a coincidence that they are doing the same.

CMN: How do you plan to accrue your revenue from this business?

MD: Initially it would be only an SMS based revenue sharing. Slowly and gradually newer avenues such as text links or ad banners would be added into this. But for that there has to be a sufficient inventory to back it up.