NowPos wins top 20 position for vMail

Hyderabad-based start-up, NowPos Online Services Private Limited, has been listed among the 'Top 20 broadband innovations in Asia Pacific' by Frost & Sullivan, a global market consulting firm.

This is the first time that an Indian company has been named in the list. NowPos has achieved this distinction for its voice e-mail service, vMail.

Addressing the media, Ayyappa Nagubandi, leader, NowPos Online Services Pvt Ltd, said, "vMail ensures that a person who does not know how to read and write in English can use the Internet and communicate via e-mail empowered with the voice component. At present, we only have an English user interface for our web service. But going ahead, we will be incorporating other language interfaces too."

vMail is the first of its kind in the world as it does not require downloads or plug-ins of any kind unlike other voice e-mail services . This apart, a person can receive the voice e-mail even if she has not registered herself with the company.

"Less than 10,000 users have already registered themselves with us," Nagubandi said.

The company will be earning revenues via advertisements that will run prior to the vMail. NowPos is also looking at options like charging an annual fee from the users who do not wish to hear any advertisements before listening to their mails.

According to T R Madan Mohan, director (consulting), ICT practice, Frost & Sullivan, vMail can be effectively used in BPO/KPO operations. The Frost & Sullivan report states that most of the web content is still in text, followed by still and animated images, and only a very small proportion of it is in the form of sound files in spite of convenience of voice over text.

The interface for NowPos voice mail is as convenient as text e-mail interface. These are some of the reasons for us to believe that this service has the potential to challenge text format e-mail, at least in the personal e-mail space, it adds.

The report also says that NowPos is keen to launch applications for voice blogging and voice news. According to Sriram Karri, director (branding and marketing), NowPos Online Services, the company will be launching voice-based ATMs in a few months from now.

"We are also tying up with a job portal for enabling voice resumes and a telecom player on how a telephone booth can be used as an internet kiosk," he added. The company is looking at revenues of $0.5 million within a year.

vMail was launched by chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy.