There is an immense growth around cloud-based SMS, voice and data messaging, and e-commerce brands and social media players are using them to engage and retain their customers
By Prabhu Mallikarjunan
With the advent of Whatsapp, snapchat and other messaging applications, traditional SMS may have become a less preferred medium of communication. But for enterprises, it is still the most relevant communication platform. Most of the push-notifications and alerts sent by the e-commerce and mobile commerce companies are done using the cloud messaging platform.
E-commerce companies, in particular, are using SMS at every stage of its consumer life cycle – from acquiring customers, engaging with them through promotions and offers and completing the transactions.
Some of the key players in the market who offer cloud messaging service include, Webaroo (Gupshup), ValueFirst, Google and mGage. The messaging spend across industry would be around Rs 75-100 crore every month. Anand Subramanian, senior director, marketing communications at Ola said, “Communication strategy is key at every stage of a customer’s lifecycle—whether it is handholding during on-boarding, re-engaging periodically or assessing user feedback. Cloud based messaging service helps us to offer a seamless experience to customers through the whole process of booking until payment.”
“Our customers will still be able to access ride information and notifications via SMS at all times and we also use cloud messaging systems for promotional SMSes to share relevant information and targeted offers with users,” Subramanian added. Ola uses its in-house communication platform and third party services offered by Webaroo and others.
Gupshup, a product of US-based Webaroo Technologies, which started in 2005 is used by big e-commerce companies like Flipkart, Snapdeal, Ola, Housing.com, Ebay.in, internet companies like Facebook, Twitter, and major banks like ICICI, HDFC, Yes Bank and others. Gupshup helps companies to acquire, engage and retain customers and offer various services under SMS, voice and email like transactional messaging, promotional messaging, 2-way Messaging, 10 gigit missed call number, toll-free number and call forwarding facilities.
With investors such as Charles River Ventures, Helion Venture Partners and Globespan Capital Partners, Webaroo’s cloud messaging business, claims to handle over 3.6 billion mobile interactions per month, with 550 plus brands, and 27,000 businesses using it service to reach over 81 million users. The company expects to clock a revenue of Rs 350 crore during 2016, a 50% increase over the current year’s target. GupShup’s ‘mobile marketing, mobile engagement, mobile CRM and mobile enterprise communication’ solutions serve various small and large businesses.
Speaking to FE, Ravi Sundararajan, COO of Webaroo Technologies (Gupshup) said, “Currently there is an immense growth around cloud based SMS, voice and data messaging. E-commerce brands and social media players are using our solutions to engage and retain their customers and 50% of our revenue comes from this business segment.” “During 2014-15, there has been a 270% increase in the spending on messaging service by the e-commerce companies and we expect it grow multifold in the coming days,” he adds.
It is estimated that top e-commerce vendors send over 100 million messages per month, while medium sized e-commerce vendors send about 50 million messages, and new entrants send about 10 million messages every month.
Snapdeal uses Gupshup’s solutions to send regular updates and offers to all their existing customers via SMS. Gaurav Gupta, vice president—engineering at Snapdeal said, “One of the main advantages of cloud messaging is the scale and the specialised services of some of these players offer. Snapdeal has sent about 72 million last month, almost 2.5 million per day.” The number is expected to grow during the festival season.
However, the important aspect of this platform is data security and the customer choice to receive the promotional message. Sundararajan says that the clients’ data can be encrypted and there’s no threat in terms of data theft (of customer contact details). Meanwhile, customers can opt for do-not-disturb (dnd) feature with their telephone operation, which would restrict the promotional messaging.
