Friday, January 22, 2010

Emerging Mobile Applications in India

Beam, with the tagline - Simple Money Service, is making waves with their prepaid mobile wallet. It has been selected as one of the top 5 mobile money applications in the world by GSMA.
Beam is an SMS based service that enables mobile subscribers to transfer money. One can load money into a virtual account in almost the same way that one loads a prepaid mobile service. An SMS to the intended recipient then allows him/ her to collect the transferred money from a designated collection point.
When we had conducted a research on this service during its development phase almost 2 years back, considerable interest was evinced from not only well-heeled consumers looking for convenience, but also from 'bottom of the pyramid' consumers. The latter comprised even migrant workers who usually remit money to their homes in rural areas by using the post office's money order system . A little training through live demonstrations could actually enable Beam's usage, among these consumers marked by a lack of literacy. Our opinion is that the bottom of the pyramid consumers would actually drive Beam's usage across India.