Deepak Ravindran ,Abhinav Sree,Ashwin Nath and Mohammed Hisamuddin, Founders, Innoz Technologies Pvt.Ltd

Innoz Technologies– enriching mobile experience

There are very few business ideas that grow from a hostel room into a venture poised to expand internationally. Innoz is one such business idea that has made waves in the mobile application and software industry. Founded by entrepreneurs Deepak Ravindran ,Abhinav Sree,Ashwin Nath and Mohammed Hisamuddin who met at the afore mentioned hostel room Innoz is a winner. We covered Innoz when they were just starting up and it is always a matter of pride for us to see them scale rapidly within the last 2 years.

Innoz is a DFJ honored venture jointly incubated at Asia's Top Business School (IIM-Ahmedabad) & Asia's Finest I.T Park (Technopark,Trivandrum).

YourStory spoke to Deepak Ravindran to gain an insiders perspective into Innoz and its journey since we last covered them.

What business idea in mobile technology does your company Innoz innovate on?

Innoz is one of the most innovative and exciting company working on rich mobile and web applications. A DFJ-CISCO honored venture jointly incubated at Asia's Top Business School (IIM-Ahmedabad) & Asia's Finest I.T Park (Technopark,Trivandrum).We are the developers of SMSGYAN - an innovative and cost effective text-messaging interface that literally delivers knowledge bytes to the user's fingertips. We developed TRANZ enabling easy transfer of photos & videos with your phonebook friends over GPRS/3G networks.

1. Which demographic are you targeting your SMSGYAN services at?

Our Flagship Product SMSGYAN is built for the community. Customer Fit in - From top to bottom of the pyramid users - If there’s one thing a user will never mind doing with a phone, it is SMS.Incremental direct revenue to operators offering information search on SMS - an access channel for the masses.

Complimenting SMSGYAN, we build CellNXT,a leading SMS/Voice gateway service provider, delivering to over 200 corporates and 550 SME's all around India.

With the advent of 3G and similar faster mobile networks around the world, high quality applications on mobile and portable devices is bound to see an exponential growth.

We developed TRANZ enabling easy transfer of photos & videos with your phonebook friends over GPRS/3G networks.

2. What sets you apart from others players in the mobile technology and software arena?

We have multiple products & revenue channels. Operator revenue share still dominate the revenue projections. We also make money via resell ling bulk SMS & voice solutions to corporate. We are also one of the pioneers in developing rich mobile applications for companies on latest technologies and platforms including iPhone,Android & Java.

3. What is the technology platform that Innoz employs

Innoz effectively uses Open Source technologies to build scalable platforms allowing us to provide apt solutions of very high quality standards at industry best pricing. We love and use PHP,MySQL and Perl..

How far do you aim to take your venture in the mobile industry?

Mobile industry the fastest growing in the world and India is projected to become second largest telecom market globally by 2010. The mobile VAS market has grown by around 60 percent year on year and is estimated to touch INR 251 billion in FY 2009-10. Within two years of existence, we had managed to evolve into a leading VAS company in India providing multiple revenue sources to operators via our innovative products such as SMSGYAN,TRANZ & CellNXT.

The key success lies in the direct associatively that we achieved with the telecos and the confidence they are betting on us by launching the products & services across their userbase. 

With telecom operators and handset vendors predicting their future success on data-enabled services, we are soon about to get an expressway that will fulfil our present and future need for serving mobile users. The aim is a billion dollar company in five years.

4.      What is the entrepreneurial philosophy that motivates the Innoz team?

“Dream big and do whatever it takes to realize your dreams’ is what motivates the Innoz team. The days are gone when u only reach the sky. We the young entrepreneurs at Innoz dare to dream big and are anything but satisfied with just reaching the sky.

5. Why say sky's the limit when there are footprints on the moon?

We aim for the stars and dare to reach there. :)

6. What has been the biggest entrepreneurial challenge for the Innoz team?

Being one of the first student start ups in India, it was quite a challenge for the team to manage both studies and work in the beginning. But as it says “Where there’s a will there’s a way”, help came from all sides for us. “Shifting gears between studies and work wasn’t easy in the beginning, but our principal, department head and teachers helped us a lot. We have been lucky to be associated with Technopark, Kerala which has provided us the best working environment and guidance in all possible ways. Our college has given us space to work and is helping us to grow more.

7. Where did you find the seed capital for your company? Any plans to raise money?

The starting investement was from the founders who equally invested a sum of 1 lakh INR. Innoz received seed investments from iAccelerator Program-IIM-A(CIIE) & Technopark,Trivandrum. Innoz also raised further rounds of funding from few NRI's who also supported to launch a marketing office in USA. Innoz will be looking for a venture capital funding on the coming financial year.

8. Has Innoz found any recognition by way of awards for its work?

• NASSCOM rated us inside Top 8 Emerging Product Companies of 2010.
• Rated under top 10 mobile application companies in India by IAMAI.
• Innoz is a Winner for Red Herring's top 100 Asia award, a prestigious list honoring the most promising private technology ventures from the Asia business region.
• Innoz is a Finalist for Red Herring's top 100 Global award, a prestigious list honoring the most promising private technology ventures from the Asia business region.
• Innoz is one among the 16 Companies to participate in the finals of DFJ-CISCO Global Business Plan Competition and the youngest to receive one on one mentoring from Indian Angel Network.
• Innoz recently received special recognition while at mBillionth Award South Asia 2010,and invited for the World Summit Award MOBILE, Abudhabi.

9. What motivates the Innoz team on its entrepreneurial journey?

Dream big and do whatever it takes to realize your dreams’ is what motivates the Innoz team.  “The days are gone when u only reach the sky. We the young entrepreneurs at Innoz dare to dream big and are anything but satisfied with just reaching the sky. We aim for the stars and dare to reach there.”

“Entrepreneurship is a rising phenomenon in India and requires players to take advantage of it. Never wait for the right time because so much is happening in the world. The most important factor is your dream which will always be your biggest inspiration. It is not easy to mix student life and business but it is definitely not impossible. Always have the desire to learn because whether you fail or succeed the learning process never ends.”

10. What goals do you plan to achieve in the coming 2 years?

Our dream is quite straight- be a major player in the mobile industry and make a difference to the world and also to be a role model for more youngsters to be successful entrepreneurs. The company is expanding pretty pace-starting from college hostel room, the company had grown tremendously well with multiple offices and young turks in India. We also have regional office at Pennsylvania,USA.

YourStory wishes Innoz Technologies Pvt.Ltd and Deepak Ravindran success and luck with their plans of Expansion. We wish them luck on their journey of entrepreneurship and exhort you to take a look at their work at http://www.innoz.in/