India’s “missed call” mobile ecosystem
Imagine you want to use your cell phone to, say, order take-out food or chat with a friend, but you don’t want to pay for making the call, or the text message. The answer to that ultra-low-cost question is India’s fascinating growth of the “missed call” ecosystem, where callers who aren’t willing to spend on, well, really anything, use the “ring once, hang up” to signal to commerce companies and friends alike on the receiving end that they want to communicate with them.
It’s essentially the poor man’s text message: a free way to nudge another person or company, but which comes in just one flavor. Indian cell phone subscribers, of which there are 900 million accounts, have a monthly average revenue per user of $3, which is rock bottom low for even a developing market.
But an indicator the missed system has gone fully mainstream is that missed calls are increasingly being used as the basis of entrepreneurial ventures. Google India’s Managing Director Rajan Anandan called “India’s missed call culture” a “massive phenomenon” at an event on Monday night organized by the group Geeks on a Plane Delhi, which I’ve been traveling with this week.
Missed calls are being incorporated into mobile apps and services as a standard type of messaging like a text or an answered call itself. For example, an Indian cloud telephony service provider startup called KooKoo has been working with a Bangalore-based company to create an information market based around missed calls. If you want to know the latest weather, the latest Groupon-style deal, or the real-time bus schedule, you can send a missed call to the designated number and get an automated or manual voice call back with the answers you need.
While the missed call system is increasingly fodder for entrepreneurs, the phenomenon has been a slight problem for the cell phones companies in India, as the free service seems to make up a significant portion of cellular traffic. According to a study from the Learning Initiatives on Reforms for Network Economies (Lirne) a couple of years ago, over half of Indian cellular subscribers made missed calls to convey a message.
The 600 million cell phone users who have 900 million cell phone accounts in India (many people have two phones) are fundamentally fueled by the search for extremely low prices in many cases. There are a lot of interesting reward programs that could be compelling, and I mentioned a poop-fueled new company earlier this week.
What do you think? Are you using missed calls for an ad-hoc low-cost messaging system?
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Comments
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FeedbackThe “Missed Call Company” mentioned in the article is ZIPDIAL, http://www.zipdial.com
They have certainly invented the missed call phenomenon in India.
-Chaitanya
Principal Architect
KooKoo
So what happens if the operators start charging the callers for making “missed calls” to certain numbers?
As I understand, it is illegal to charge for missed to ANY number as per current telecom policy.
The simple solution would be to start charging for cellular usage when the call begins, not when the call is answered.
It would not be unreasonable to charge for usage like this. This “missed call” method is an exploit to a poorly structured billing model. Sure, it’d decimate this ecosystem, but it sounds like this ecosystem isn’t healthy for cellular networks.
I don’t actually see how missed calls are an effective signalling mechanism for transactions described in the article. Using a missed call to signal a callback to avoid cost doesn’t actually work, as you are still billed for the return call. Instead of missing the call, you could have just made the call and had one less step in receiving the information that you require.
If the signalling doesn’t actually require you to receive a response, I guess it could be valid, but there is very little information that you can provide simply by making a missed call.
In India incoming calls are free and hence not billed. Only outgoing calls are charged
In India, you don’t get billed if you receive a call
True
Only when you are not traveling and are in the same state or city the number was registered
As noted by others, callee doesn’t pay for the incoming call. Also, the telecom operator loses revenue since the calling party might be using another operator to call (although it can be argued that it all might balance out for some big operators).
In India, operators earn 20 paise per minute for every incoming call. Strange but true.
Because incoming calls are free, people in India use this “Missed Call” phenomenon very frequently to save up on their mobile phone bills. Why, I even know people in offices whose wives give them a missed call and the husband calls them back on the office land-line phone!!
The problem with this approach is that the Telcos would be under pressure to connect the call at the earliest … right now they take their own sweet time and add their own messages without thought to airtime usage …. I think this idea is a long time away – Reliance did try it briefly – but it went wrong for them ….
@ Physical – U don’t seem to understand the Indian Cellular network operation. THERE IS NO CHARGE FOR THE RECEIVED CALLS – doesn’t it make sense ? U don’t have to pay for the calls u receive, unlike the stupid policy in the USA ? To understand the “missed call culture” awesomeness, u gotta be in India. Period !
Incoming calls have always been free in India since the 1990s. Why would you be billed for an incoming call? It makes no sense. It also makes no sense why cellphone service in the USA is more expensive than land lines. It doesn’t require any putting in of cables like land lines do.
Incoming calls were chargable during the early stages of mobile in India 2000-2002.
This is how it works, for example: Poor housemaid has a cellphone, but cannot afford to make calls. She give the lady of the house a missed call to indicate she won’t be coming in today. If the person called needs more details, she gives a callback, since she is relatively rich and can afford to make the call. So someone did get charged, but it was the person who could afford it. However, the benefits of mobile communication were made available to a person who would otherwise have been unable to afford the luxury. So the mobile operator made more money than the case where no mobile communication would have taken place, due to affordability.
I assume by “poor housemaid,” you mean slave. India has lots of slaves.
@H : You assume incorrectly. I mean exactly what I wrote – A housemaid with relatively meager earnings. If you know of any “slaves” in India, I would strongly urge you to bring it to the attention of the authorities, since slavery of any kind is a punishable offence in India. You don’t want to be complicit in slavery by omission, do you?
Can’t be just India. I’ve seen students in Europe doing this for years. For instance to signal “Hey, I’m on Skype, turn on your computer and call me”. Or “Ring my phone when you get here”. Really all the time.
kaite, a good attempt, but one suggestion… when looking at other ecosystems than the one you have lived and breathed, would be great if you can collaborate with a local expert… this article was very light on depth… did not mention a large (although definitely NOT the original as some have claimed) organisation called zipdial (run by a foreigner!) which is making substantial money from this method by offering voting lines etc using such numbers (just like in foreign companies premium sms’s are used) – that kind of answers the question “physical” had as well… “physical” also obviously fails to understand the indian ecosystem saying “but it still costs money to call back”… too true, but he doesn’t realise that the original person who gave a missed call can’t afford the call (although you have kind of touched on it via the $3ARPU mention)…
would be great though if you collaborated with an expert from every local industry that you wrote about, as it adds a lot more depth to the article…
THanks @ringlerun, It is light on details and is just a short trend piece, but I did talk to about a half dozen locals as I am here in Delhi for the Geeks on a Plane trip.
Agreed – ZipDial has introduced quite a number of “enterprise” offerings based on missed-call ecosystem, including big-brand voting systems.
btw, pity that we can’t log in with our google accounts, but you have linkedin, twitter, fb api’s all integrated for a SSO type of scenario…
also, i note that the comments are moderated… hmm…
So you can’t afford to make a phone call; but half of the people have two cell phones to not make phone calls on.
Yes, people get multiple accounts so they can get the best deals from carriers. They also have phones with multiple SIM cards in them and the customer can swap out the card for the particular carrier when the carrier is offering some really good deal/rate.
hehe, we are like that onlly ;) but seriously this miss call business is getting annoying, i dont callbak anymore so the other person has no choice but to actually call up if its something important,unless of course its the bai(maid) or the repairman etc…and anyway this is chaiging rapidly as android phones cheaper than 7000 rs are entering the market and u can actually see the garbageman happily surfing the net on his cheap droid…
ive seen the panwala(guy who sells pan and ciggerettes) sporting an iphone…
Missed call is a phenomenon in India. One recent campaign which used missed call was the recent India Against Corruption group , the body behind Jan LokPal movement, which undertook missed call campaign to garner support for and disseminate information on the Anti Corruption agitation and the Jan Lok Pal bill
Never thought our “missed call” culture can be an entrepreneurship opportunity… Great!
I think the hit being taken by the cellular operators on this one is a fair amount of poetic justice for the fraud the operators perpetrate by massively over-charging SMS messaging.
If you take the loss of revenue due to missed calls in that context, I am sure it would not be as much of a trouble that operators are complaining about.
There is a start-up that was born (not in India) on the concept of “missed call”, and it has been used in several adv campaigns in Europe, it’s called 1ring.com.
They should check-out India, maybe…