Indian Entrepreneur Taps into a Global Offline Market

Some companies see value in spilling the beans.  That is, sharing their secrets.

Earlier this year, Tesla announced that it would open up its blueprints, enabling innovators across the world to see the design behind their famous electric car.

Deepak Ravindran, a young entrepreneur, and founder of Innoz, an offline search platform for the Internet-less world, is doing the same: disclosing the technology behind Innoz, by making it open source.

Famous in India for turning "dumb" phones into smart phones, Ravindran developed Innoz while in college (in 2011).  Though India has almost 100 percent saturation of mobile phones, the bulk of them (700 million) were not online.  Ravindran realized that Google , for this folks, was unreachable.  To offer an alternative, he built a SMS system that lets users text a question, and (pop!) a response (with the answer) would appear.  He had over 100 million users by the end of 2012 and revenues in excess of $3 million.

The company grew quickly, building partnerships with global search brands: Wikipedia, and Bing, for instance.  Soon enough, he had developed it further to handle emails (via gmail), tweets, and Facebook posts.  Today, the feature comes preloaded on many devices in the country.  The business model quickly evolved as well: from charging per question to a monthly subscription.

As requests kept coming in from other countries to set up a similar service, Ravindran realized that Innoz was suitable for a larger global offline audience.  This week, he shared the source code for his company on offlineinternet.org.  Meanwhile the company has sold its licenses to operators in a host of emerging markets: Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Nigeria, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines. 

“It’s the joy of connecting the unconnected with technology,” he says that propelled him at Innoz, and is now pushing him to share that with a larger market..  “I truly believe in the power of the Internet for connecting the offline world.” 

The Indian smartphone market is growing with cheaper Android-based phones converting more people into online users.  Hence, it was time for Ravindran to move forward.

Ravindran is now working on a new startup, Lookup, a messaging app for local businesses in India.  In addition, he mentors other entrepreneurs, hoping to build a community of startups in South India, specifically Kerala where he went to college and conceived Innoz.