Phone as ‘answer engine’: Start-up bridges Net gap with SMS

"My boyfriend is not picking up his phone. What should I do?"

"Can I wear a light-blue shirt and cream pants to my job interview tomorrow?"

"What is the chemical formula of sulphuric acid?"

At Innoz, a mobile search engine start-up based in Bangalore, the questions stream in fast and furious, at a rate of 3,000 queries per second. In an SMS-crazy country, millions of Indians who have not yet clambered aboard the internet revolution are using the texting feature on their mobile phones to search for instant answers.

The queries pour through in Hinglish (a mix of Hindi & English), Kanglish (Kannada & English), Tanglish (Tamil & English) and a host of regional variations. Those seeking replies are mainly 18- to 25-year-olds — middle-class Indians from small towns and smaller cities who do not have internet access. And their questions present a fascinating glimpse into the mind of the young, "middle" India.

Teamed up with leading mobile service providers, the company currently fields 35 million queries each month for Re 1 an answer — making it arguably the largest offline search engine in the world.

Every time a user texts her query to '55444', Innoz's software searches through own files and vast internet databases to pull out appropriate answers. Responses are sent back within seconds. An "unlimited questions" subscription costs all of Rs 30 and mobile service providers share with it their revenues.

From Satara in the west and Imphal in the east to Rajahmundry in the south, love and romance, education and career, Bollywood and cricket are what fascinate India's small-town youth the most. Others want to know how to get rid of dandruff, to become rich, to forget someone, or to gain height.

"An SMS is simple and extremely private," explains Deepak Ravindran, 25, co-founder and CEO of Innoz, which calls itself the "answer engine". Whatever the subject, people are not afraid to ask "because the answer stays between you and your phone", he says. That explains why Innoz's peak traffic is between 6 and 11 pm, when answers can be sought on menstruation to morning-after pill.

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