From P2P to M2M: Indian firm reinvents text messaging

MANILA, Philippines - Filipinos instantly fell in love with text messaging when it was introduced about 10 years ago. Now, an Indian company is reinventing how Filipinos send and receive text messages.

Mumbai-based SMS GupShup is introducing SMS Reply All, a service that allows subscribers to simultaneously communicate with multiple people through SMS. It is initially available through Globe Telecom but is expected to be offered by other carriers also.

SMS GupShup founder and CEO Beerud Sheth, who was in Manila last week, said SMS Reply All extends the capabilities of text messaging from basic person-to-person or P2P to many-to-many or M2M.

“It is similar to the commonly used ‘CC’ and ‘Reply-All’ features on e-mail,” he said, likening the service to a Twitter through text. “It’s so basic that you wonder why it was not part of the original SMS concept.”

The Philippines is considered the undisputed texting capital of the world. A recent study by UK-based Portio Research showed that each Filipino mobile phone user sends as much as 788 text messages per month, or over 40 percent more than their counterparts in the United States.

Beerud expects that with SMS Reply All, this number would surely increase.

 “It requires no training, no software downloads, no data connectivity nor a change in handset. Even old people can easily use it because it’s plain text messaging,” he said.

The Indian executive expects virtually every user of text messaging to also use SMS Reply-All, with the youth and college students as the early adopters.

“We’re all social animals. Texting one person at a time just isn’t social enough. Students can use this whether they are just chit-chatting or organizing social parties, meetings or any other activity that requires coordination among multiple individuals. Instead of relaying and forwarding messages from one person in the group to the other, everyone in a group can update everyone else at the same time. In fact, reply-all conversations become so engaging that it becomes hard for any participant to stay out of the discussion,” he said.

How does the service work?

Any Globe subscriber can start a conversation by typing “CHAT 917xxxxxxx 905xxxxxxx 926xxxxxxx” (where 917xxxxxxx etc. are the numbers of the friends) and send it to 2993. The system will create a group and prompt the group creator to send the first message, which goes to all participants in the group. Participants can simply reply to the message – which will also be sent to all participants in the group.

Beerud noted that a group can have at most 10 participants, including the initiator. A message sent to the group will cost the sender 75 centavos per recipient, and one peso for other keywords or commands. Globe plans to launch various daily, weekly and monthly UNLI plans soon.