It was just 2 years back, that there came a flood like situation in India in term of number of websites which allowed users to send free SMS. Their revenue model varied right from in-sms ad in 160by2 to footer ads in the leader i.e. way2sms. Most of the people didn’t know that there were sites like freesms8 which offered full 160 character length without any charges.
These situations and strategies make people think about their revenue models but for websites like Way2Sms, the revenue came from the advertisement which were shown up on their website. Their service attracted a huge mass that they were consistently in top 30 most visited websites of the country.
Keeping the same strategy in mind, NumberTank, a Surat (Gujarat) based startup is going one step further and offering free web to mobile calling to its users. Its not 2-3 minutes but it is as high as 30 minutes of internet to mobile calls everyday free. As a user you can make calls to people on your contact list free for 30Mins everyday (carry-forward-able). Currently the calls can be made to India, US and Canada. More countries would be added soon. However, you need to have an invite from existing members to join the network.
Their homepage looks like one of a social-networking website, however its not a social website exactly. NumberTank also offers commonly available services such as birthday reminder via SMS etc.
Our Take
The 30 minutes free talk-time offer looks interesting enough to attract huge masses. However, there are other constraints such as the call quality etc. which needs to be taken care of. Their viral invitation based method may work initially to attract the users, but to be one of the top websites, they will also need to have a strong revenue model to support the system.
Ankit is founder of TechDip. A student of Software Engineering. He is a passionate writer who loves writing about anything and everything related to Technology. Ankit aims to be at the top in every field he is involved in.Catch him on Twitter @techpil or Google+
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