Munduspeak helps cut mobile bills: Geodesic

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Munduspeak, the new VoIP over mobile phones service launched by Geodesic, helps cut telephone bills and has already reported 10,000 downloads for the service since its launch a month ago.

Director at Geodesic Information , Mahesh Murthy says that right now the service is free data, but hopes to move to a paid model soon once the company had things ironed out and when users understand the value of service that they are getting.

Geodesic expects to license Munduspeak between USD 3-5 per month per user and Mumdu radio is also expected to be launched soon.
 
Excerpts from CNBC-TV18's exclusive interview with Mahesh Murthy:

Q: Lot of talk is doing the rounds in the market on your new product Munduspeak? Could you tell us how it is going? How the response has been from the market?

A: We launched Munduspeak about a month ago and this is in Beta. Basically it allows one to make VoIP calls on mobile phones. It is a product that has a lot of telecom companies worried and a lot of consumers love it because of the huge potential to cut one's cell phone bill by allowing free phone calls or near free phone calls on cell phone.

So Munduspeaks currently works on Windows Mobile and on Symbian Platform, which account for majority of phones out there. We have been bettering it for over a month. We have tens of thousands of downloads and it is going well. Right now it is a free data and we hope to move to a paid model soon, once we have the things ironed out and when users will know the value of service that they are getting.

Q: When do you step-up your marketing efforts on this and take that product to market and what could be to your estimates early revenue potential number that you could share with?

A: We are not going to mention any revenue numbers right now, but I can certainly tell you that we already stepped-up significant marketing efforts out here. We have an entire team of marketing professionals that has been hired in the US. So it is a kind of an international product, where the product and the consumer marketing team are driven out of the US where we have seven people.

The codex of the product has been built and a lot of these systems came from our acquisition of Simputer last year. So the core technology part came from Bangalore, while the expertise supporting it to Symbian and Windows Platform came from our Mumbai office. So it's truly been an international effort; we have staffed up to make this happen and make this move everywhere.

Q: You will not talk about revenue expectations yet, but could you tell us whether you think this product could materially alter your revenues once it hits market?

A: Yes, we certainly think so. The current thought is that we would like to be able to license this product for USD 3-5 a month per user per phone. We think that it is the right kind of price at which people will not mind using this product that allows them to have free phone calls with anybody they can find online.

The product now works on GPRS and WiFi. So as long as one has GPRS and WiFi on their phones and even lots of modern phones have them. So all of these are moving together, the phones are becoming more modern, GPRS is growing and I think our product is hitting the market at a right time.

Q: USD 3-5 per customer, so far, what kind of response you have seen. Any indication of how many customers could be interested in a product like this?

A: Again we cannot mention numbers, but certainly can say that downloads are in tens of thousands already in the last one month. We do not know yet what the amount of conversion will be to the paid model. We do not think it should be too much of an issue, we think between USD 3-5 per user per month is a reasonable model and the model is substiantially based on the longevity of the period that you have signed up for. It's not going to be a big part of the users mobile bill and we are cautiously optimistic in terms of the impact this will have on our bottom and topline.

Q: One word on Mundu radio and when do you expect to launch that one?

A: This product is in Alfa, the product is well tested, and we are scooping out revenue models to the product right now. It is a great product, which allows one to listen to any Internet radio station anywhere in the world on mobile phone on a streaming radio basis and at this point we want to get adoption, then gear up and get the revenue model working out of that soon.