SMSCountry Networks to launch cloud telephony services soon

SMSCountry Networks, a Hyderabad SMS gateway services provider, is gearing up to launch SmartNumber, its low-cost cloud-based telephony offering, for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) shortly, said chief executive officer Satya Kalyan Yerramsetti.

“The service is currently in the private beta stage and is being used by seven clients. We should be launching it commercially in the first week of November. We already have 2,000 SMEs using our marketing and alert services in India, while we have over 700 customers in the UAE. Most of these are expected to take this additional functionality to facilitate better interaction with their customers,” he told Business Standard.

Cloud telephony offerings eliminate the traditional PBX systems and related installed hardware, which typically require an investment of between Rs 1.5 lakh and Rs 2 lakh, and provide solutions like incoming and dial-out calls, e-fax, short message service (SMS) and interactive voice response on the cloud.

The privately-held company sold its person-to-person messaging portal 160by2.com to Way2Online Interactive India, also from Hyderabad, in an all-cash deal and for an undisclosed sum in January 2012. It has used a portion (close to Rs 4 crore) of the sale proceeds in developing its cloud telephony product over the last one-and-a-half years.

Stating that the market for PBX and the technologies used in digital marketing in India is estimated to be Rs 2,000 crore, Yerramsetti said companies could not tap the full potential in India with cloud telephony unless Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) was opened in India.

VoIP is a methodology and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol networks such as the Internet. At present, it is illegal to have VoIP gateways inside India.

“Once the VoIP comes in, the adaption of cloud telephony services will be much faster in India. We are hopeful that it will be a mainstream technology in the next two-three years and will be a great business to be in,” he said.