By Sweta Nair From Christ University , Bangalore What do I pay for this
call? Nothing at all! Gone are the days when we needed the magic of
internet to connect to our friends for apparently free web run apps.
These free apps, run by not so free or cheap internet recharges, might
soon crash and burn when Freekall hits the market after a month. Let us
go back to the beginning. One fine day, a group of four engineers--
Yashas Shekhar, Sandesh E, Vijay Umaluti and Sabari Jagadeesan- left
their jobs. Not just any jobs, lucrative salary and corporate perks to
give shape to new ideas. They thought big and started small. From
developing web based applications for small companies, they gradually
began shaping and giving form to Freekall. And as history has seen it
several times before and future will see many a times ahead, there
emerged a story that the writers like us love to write. These Bangalore
based basketball lovers spent a liberal chunk of a year moulding their
plan into action until December last year. Freekall is an app that will allow the
users to give calls any where any time without being charged. It brings
voice over internet (VoIP) to people who do not have access to internet.
All one has to do is give a missed call to the Freekall number. They
would then receive a call from the company server enabling them to dial
any number and talk for as long as the caller wants. As of now this app
successfully offered 600,000 free calls in a span of 5 days during its
trial run. Image credit: cdn1.yourstory.com The only catch, though, is
that the users will have to listen to the advertisements every two
minutes. This should not be much of a problem for us. We Indians, after
all, love the free stuff, don't we? It won't be wrong to say that we are
the kind who watch and read advertisements the moment we see the word
'FREE' written anywhere around them. The world is filled with people who
buy a Rs 500 pack of detergent, even though they don't need it, just
because they will get a free Tupperware. As of now, the plan is to
provide around million calls a day and are expected to achieve their
target revenue of Rs185 crores through advertisements. In December, last
year, Ranjit Cherickal, former head of Nokia Siemens, Africa, poured in
an investment of ten lakhs into this innovative concept. For sure
millions of users would welcome the advertisements for a limitless call
free of any charges. Also these advertisements would add more topics to
talk upon. It certainly is too early to predict the success or failure
of this app but it will without a doubt turn heads when properly out in
the market. Want to blog for us? Please click here. Image credit:
qph.is.quoracdn.net
