Webaroo’s journey from offline search to mobile web

It was 2004. When Rakesh Mathur took his regular walks down the streets of Seattle, it struck him that his Blackberry connection was not good enough to deliver the kind of detailed information he wanted on the web. Mathur, a serial entrepreneur of Junglee fame, discussed the problem with Bradley Husick, who was vice-president at a web technology company.

With a focus on offline search, Webaroo was finally launched in April 2006 after an angel investment of $15 million. Since then, the company has done a bit of exploring. For one, it has largely come to concentrate on the mobile market in India. Webaroo’s first mobile product was Web to Go, an application for browsing the web. Its latest launch has been an SMS group platform. In effect, Webaroo’s strategy has been a trickle-down from the higher end to simpler services. Whether this strategic shift was part of the original plan is an open question.

The Offline Conundrum

A year later, in March 2007, Webaroo launched its application for mobile web browsing. Though the product is available for download on Webaroo’s website, its functioning depends largely on network availability and whether the phone supports Java and Internet browsing. Since mobile web networks vary greatly across countries, Webaroo has concentrated on India’s fast-developing mobile market. This is evident from the fact that of Webaroo’s 100 employees, 90 are based in India in three offices, while the headquarters are in Bellevue, US.

In India, too, mobile web is largely a tangle of operators-regulators-content providers. Untangling this mess has been the greatest challenge for Webaroo – no deal with telecom operators has come through. Chirag Jain, vice-president, India operations, says, “The operators are really sitting on a flight of fancy. Their story is only of user acquisition, and this will continue for the next two to three years. But after the market plateaus, they will have to look at beefing up revenues and that will come with data services. This is the worldwide trend.”

Reality Download

Chasing numbers is not the only problem with telecom operators. They have also not managed to develop clear pricing models for data services. Though Webaroo is positioned as ‘network- and carrier-agnostic’, some connectivity is still required to download the information packs. And until content facilitators like Webaroo and telecom companies reach a mutual agreement on revenue sharing and pricing, things may well remain static.

Rajiv Hiranandani, country head of Mobile2win, a mobile VAS company in India, thinks the Webaroo application is a good model. However, he adds, “It will work better if provided to users on subscription instead of paying for the amount of data downloaded.”

Vijay Shekar Sharma, founder and CEO of one97 Communications, another mobile VAS company, feels that Webaroo’s product is innovative, but “still needs good connectivity”. He adds that “it misses the punch of live browsing. Moreover, it is more suitable for niche segments like students or high-flying executives.”

Though it started off as desktop software, Webaroo has clearly seen more potential in the mobile. Jain says, “The laptop is the highest-end portable device. So for that, Webaroo had to be marketed as ‘offline search’, but for the mobile, it is more about ‘seamless mobile browsing’.”

Has Webaroo been able to shake off its ‘offline search’ tag, something it started with initially? “We are not an offline company,” says Jain. “We want Webaroo to be seen as a mobile infrastructure company which facilitates mobile users to consume web content,” he adds.

Dial M for Mobile

Webaroo’s latest product is SMS GupShup, launched in May 2007. This platform lets users build communities that can interact through SMS. The company has also signed on advertisers for text ads at the end of the SMSes that are exchanged.

This is one product that is largely independent of operators, and it seems to be catching on. From 10,000 since its launch, the numbers of users on SMS GupShup has grown to over 100,000. SMS GupShup does seem like Webaroo’s most promising output. “We will continue to invest heavily in SMS GupShup. We will also be launching new features in the next few weeks,” says Jain.

The company has plans to move from SMS to Java-based and web-based integration products. This will also allow users to send messages through e-mail, instant messaging and so on. Jain believes that there is a “huge potential” in mobile advertising.

There is potential, but mobile advertising is largely untapped in India except for short code campaigns. The VAS industry relies on ‘hygiene services’ such as wallpapers and ringtones to pull the engine. IMRB estimates that games and data products make up only 7 per cent of the Rs 2,850 crore VAS industry (expected to double this year), while ringtones make up 35 per cent.

As Webaroo’s meandering journey has shown, it is best to latch on to Indian users through basic and inexpensive services like SMS. There are only 15 per cent GPRS-enabled phones in India, and not all of them are used to access data. While Webaroo’s SMS services may do well, the company will have to work on getting users to graduate to higher-end services which allow for greater interaction and, therefore, more advertising opportunities.