CONTENT DELIVERY ON 'missed-calls'

The just-concluded cricket world cup tournament saw an innovative service on the mobile platform. Anyone who wanted to know the score only had to give a ‘missed-call’ to a specified number, to get a call back or SMS with the score. Such ‘missed-call’ campaigns are the latest promotional tool for marketers, says its developer, a Bangalore-based tech start-up ZipDial Mobile Solutions Private Limited.
The company says its patent-pending technology has been used in campaigns of Proctor & Gamble, KFC, Pepsi, Sanofi-Aventis, Videocon, and even for Miss Bangalore pageant and a recent Nasscom conference in Mumbai.
t enables promotional activities through its ‘call-to-action’ platform, where consumers interested in a product or service have to dial a number without any charge. The user has to dial a particular dialing number given to companies by ZipDial. The call gets disconnected and they get a reverse call back. The user’s number gets registered through the ZipDial’s platform.

The companies promoting the products or services can then use the registered mobile numbers of their potential users, who by dialling the number had shown interest in their product, for sending promotional messages and offers.
“The concept caters to 100 per cent mass market, as it is free of cost and takes not much effort for dialing,” Valerie Rozycki, chief executive office, Zip Dial, said. As a mass market tool, it offers varied services like polling and generating sales lead and brings customers closer to their brands using high penetration of telecom services.
“The concept, which was launched last year during IPL matches, has scored big during this year’s World Cup. On the very first day of the World Cup cricket match, we received 4 million dials on a single day,” she said.
The high penetration of the Indian mobile market, which is expected to reach 800 million, will help the company expand its reach and business, she said.
“State Bank of India is currently going through a pilot project, which was run by Eko, SBI’s business correspondent. Customers can check account details through this service aimed at those who are not English literate,” she said.
The KFC campaign was started in Chicago, and a fan-club engagement during the football World Cup.
Timing it with Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s regulations on SMS spam, which came into effect on April 1, 2011, it recently launched a verification service, which has been used by e-commerce companies including Flipkart, Myntra, SnapDeal and TutorVista.
Zip Dial, founded by Valerie Rozycki and Amiya Pathak, started with self-funding and recently received VC funding of $800,000 (Rs 3.6 crore) from Mumbai Angels.SOURCE

SMS-free mobile number verification service launched

ZipDial, SMS-free mobile number verification service is launched by three ecommerce and web businesses - Flipkart, Myntra and TutorVista. The new service enables all end customers of these businesses to shop and transact with verified mobile numbers and eliminates dependency on SMS.


ZipDial is a patent-pending and innovative approach which works on all phones and allows customers to better comply with the new TRAI guidelines on SMS delivery. ZipDial's solution is based on dialing numbers–or giving a missed call – so there is zero dependency on SMS. This solution has several benefits including zero cost and simple for end users, verification without any SMS delivery latency issues, cost savings for the web business and enabling ZipDial to Verify is as simple as embedding a single line of HTML code on one's website.

An IVR Based Service To Verify Any Service via ZIP DIAL

Zipdial – a service which leverages the missed call mechanism – has introduced an innovative approach to work around the SMS restrictions brought about by the complex TRAI regulations. We have covered Zipdial in the past for surveys and also at our flagship event UnPluggd for running contests.

Verification of phone numbers has been usually done by ecommerce sites sending a verification SMS with a PIN to the user. The user then enters the PIN received in the ecommerce site thereby indicating his ownership of the number. This is fraught with its own challenges – e.g. late delivery of SMS (we have tried with the most common SMS gateways and all of them have had some issues with late delivery). Verification of users has become an issue with TRAI mandating that even these have to adhere to rules same as promotion SMS. Therefore the gateways have to block sending these SMS to people on DND list – almost striking a death blow to mobile phone verification.

Well almost. The new service by Zipdial generates a random number to call for an user once the user has submitted his mobile number on the registration form on the ecomm site. The user can call within a specified (customizable) time and his call is disconnected after a ring. The Zipdial system then recognizes the number called, and sends the appropriate message / indication / service call response to the ecomm site.

Myntra, Flipkart have already started utilizing this service for mobile number verification. This solution has several benefits including:

• Zero cost and simple for end users
• Immediate verification without any SMS delivery latency issues
• Cost savings for the web business (no cost of sending SMS)

They also mention Tutorvista – where this service is used for lead generation (same flow as above – but someone would call you after you verify your phone. Although the efficacy for this flow is somewhat circumspect – why wouldnt the user just call a toll free number and talk to a person for his requirement? The SMS flow was different because the user could be lazy and just have the PIN entered. The business would be spending money to call and get requirements from customer anyways – why should they spend it with Zipdial?

However that doesn’t take away the major advantages this powerful system brings to the table. I am sure they would be tweaking the system to polish it for other vendors e.g.

a) giving specific numbers for ecommerce sites (which ecomm sites can advertise)

b) figure out time – elastic verification methods (call any time)

c) Support for other countries including US (I am sure they have this)

d) API based support vs a web page plugin (integrate with mobile apps – and enable calling directly from the phone)

e) Two factor authentication – Some businesses might still require a PIN, could they customise CRBT to say a PIN e.g. even if its a missed call the PIN could be the a ringtone.

Do try out the new service at http://zipdial.com/zipdial/verify and let us know your feedback!

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