It always feels good when we give something back to the community we grew up in, doesn’t it? That is exactly the way we felt when we partnered with Zee Cafe for their Green Turn initiative that was organized as a means to spread awareness about making our cities greener. Green Turn was organized on the sidelines of the World Environment Day on June 5. On this day, volunteers gathered around some of the most popular hangouts in Mumbai and donated saplings to visitors. The visitors took an oath to adopt and nurture the saplings and be a ‘potster’. You can call this a small beginning towards a greener Mumbai.
As our bit towards this campaign, 160by2 promoted the significance of World Environment Day as well as Zee Cafe’s Green Turn initiative through its SMSes. In the ad space that accompanies the free SMSes sent from 160by2.com, we requested users to adopt a sapling and nurture them that shall be a way of giving it back to the community. We received a terrific response to this campaign, and from Zee Cafe’s release, hundreds of saplings were adopted and vowed to be nurtured on that day.
The campaign was given a fillip by the presence of celebrities like Nina Manuel and Amrit Maghera. This did help in the cause as the event received great coverage in the media. Here is a Youtube video of the event as covered by Zee News.
We all love watching Zee Cafe, don’t we!! Now how about winning exciting prizes for doing the same? 160by2 has partnered with Zee Cafe to launch Cafe Carnival 2008 - a simple, yet enthralling contest that I bet shall get you glued to keep coming back to take part in this daily contest. The rules of the game are simple: There are a few simple questions that you need to answer every day. And what do you win for answering them? Here :
An Exotic holiday for two from Country Club daily
4 GB Nano with Photo, Video and MP3
Logitech Audio Station Express TM
Philips 7- TFT LCD DVD Player
Nikon Coolpix S51
Sony PSP
Gift Vouchers from Charagh Din
Aren’t these prizes wow!!! Now, get started to all the fun. If you have been using 160by2 to send SMS, you can see the link to the contest once you send an SMS. Alternately, you can also answer it on our WAP page at http://160by2.com/zeecafe on your GPRS enabled mobile phones. Come, join the carnival!
Well, we started 160by2 in June 2007 and now we are almost one year old, growing at a great pace!! Thanks to all our 160by2 users who have helped us spread it..its like a virus effect!! This phenomenal increase in USER base has purely been because of word of mouth effect!!
Long back we had put up the pictures of our team at 160by2! We had a lot of comments pouring in and a lot of mails asking more about the team behind this!! A few users have also sent us mails saying they would also want to be a part of this team and if there were any vacancies!!
When given a chance to be a free spirit, more innovative ideas can be thought of and that’s what we offer at 160by2. That’s why we do not believe in defining roles, it is more of a person’s choice to recognise their role suitable to his strengths and excel in it.
We have not been featured in the Top 25 Coolest Offices in the World, nor do we have a headquarters at Downtown Mumbai. But we have some of the coolest people working on some of the coolest projects to provide what our users best love about our website - Free SMS.
Will you miss anything working with us? Monday Morning Blues definitely! But there are a lot many things you would miss by not working with us - A collegiate atmosphere, fun loving colleagues, freedom to make decisions, and the best of all - a job that you shall love!”
Many users who send us resume, ask about vacancies and give calls to know more about the company- this is the right time to grab an opportunity to be a part of this emerging medium…
We are a small company with less than 100 employees, and that makes each one of our employees the boss in his/her own right. No needless documentations, no needless reporting to the boss. At 160by2, employees make their own decisions and can do what they feel is best. for more on culture@160by2 check out this post.
We are now looking for people who can join hands with us working for a startup company. Being a part of the new age medium not only gives the thrill factor but also gives the right recognition!
What kind of people we want:
We are looking for people who have a passion for challenges, join us for the challenge of working in a startup and building a company/team. They will part of the new economy business and high growth industry (mobile advertising).
Experience in media industry with an in depth understanding of media marketing in TV/Radio/Newspaper/ Magazine/Internet. Possessing a decent understanding of digital marketing vertical will be desirable.
As a prospective employee of 160by2 sales team, we expect you to be a self-driven person with a zeal to beat your targets. Uncanny knack for developing new contacts from thin air, managing relationships and cracking deals is something which we really treasure.
Strong command in communication and presentation skills is a must.
Summarizing:
Educational qualification: MBA in sales and marketing from tier I(JBIMS, FMS, XLRI, NITIE, SYMBIOSIS) or tier II( XIM, IIPM, ICFAI) schools(any other specialization considered if sales skills are perceivable or demonstartable)
Experience required: 2-3 years of on the ground sales
Personality: passion for entreprenuership and new digital medium like internet and mobile
Soft skills: excellent communication skill, fluent english speaking ability, very good understanding of internet medium, knowledge of web based advertising terms like CPA, CPM
Responsibilities: selling mobile advertising solutions, managing relationship with brand managers & media planning agencies.
Location: Mumbai/Delhi/Bangalore
Number of positions: 6 in Mumbai, 4 in Delhi, 2 in Bangalore
How to apply: Send your resume to Jobs@160by2.com or leave your details along with mail id in the comments section for us to contact you
The WAP site of 160by2 came up seven months ago, and since then it has grown manifold and today close to 15 percent of our SMSes is through mobiles. With so many of our users on mobile, it becomes extremely important to let our WAP users have a great user experience, just like their website counterparts do. It is also challenging in a way, because unlike the website, we do not have seemingly infinite space on the mobile screen and so providing all the features while maintaining the simplicity on a mobile screen is extremely vital.
Over the past few weeks, we have been working strenuously to develop a WAP site that would sync the features available on the WAP site with those on the website. Today, we are not only releasing a cleaner, better looking homepage but are also adding up links that hitherto did not exist on the WAP site. We now have a MENU link at the extreme top of the WAPsite. This shall be the one click route for the user to access a vast array of features. Given that we guys at 160by2 are always developing newer features for the website (and the WAP site), the MENU page would also let the users access all these features from here. We have introduced the ‘My Interests’ link in the MENU page where you may select categories of interest to you.
WAP users would have already tried our ‘Upload Phonebook’ option. We thought the user experience would be better with placing this link on the MENU page rather than the homepage, and hence you shall find a link to this as well on the MENU page. This apart, we have also introduced the CHANGE PASSWORD link. This was an option long overdue and we have finally got the link for you on WAP.
We have loads of features planned for users in the upcoming weeks and keep checking back on the MENU page to see the list grow by the day. As for the other pages, we feel that the new design gives a much cleaner, uncluttered look to the entire WAPsite. This has been the hallmark of 160by2 all along, hasn’t it?
160by2 had recently run an exciting contest for our users with Zee Studio. The rules of the game were simple - simply forward the synopsis of the two movies ‘FlightPlan’ and ‘Water Boy’ to at least 25 of your friends to win DVDs/VCDs. No lucky winners here! Everyone who participated in this contest to forward the synopsis to 25 of their friends gets to win the gift!
I am happy to announce the winners of this contest. But before that, let me also request all the winners (you are one if you find your username below) to email your postal address to us at 160by2@smscountry.com IMMEDIATELY so we could send you the gifts
Hearty Congratulations once again to all the winners…Keep rocking!
Addendum
A few of our users have wrote to us asking if the prizes have been sent to their addresses. We would like to inform you that the contest was organized by Zee and we, as a partner have forwarded the winners’ addresses to them. Zee shall be shortly contacting you and distribute the prizes. We are in touch with them regarding the same. Thanks.
It is now more than a year since we at 160by2 started serving you as a FREE SMS provider online. In this period, we have moved from being a relatively unknown website to now have more than a million users logging in everyday to send free SMS to their loved ones.
A million people cannot have the same needs and we realized it long time ago and this prompted us to launch newer and better ways to send free SMSes online. You can now send free SMS via GPRS from your mobile phone, download our application onto your mobile phones and send SMS to address book contacts on your mobile phone and also if you are at office with only access to email, we also have the Email to SMS feature. We have also come up with beautiful widgets that bloggers amongst you can insert on your blogs or websites so that your readers can send free SMS from your blog and do not have to actually visit our website to do so.
While we have introduced so many exciting ways to send SMS for free, we also felt it necessary to communicate this better to you, our favorite users. We have hence redesigned the homepage of 160by2.com to provide a cleaner and better interface where you can easily get to know about the different ways to send SMS. Also, with the number of new users visiting our site increasing exponentially, our new design would help these new users to register from the homepage itself.
Hope you enjoy the new looks of our homepage. Comments welcome, as always. You can also pour in your views on our forums here.
Another proud moment in our short history. 160by2.com Website is now ranked amongst top 100 websites in India! We have known this for sometime, but what really took us by surprise is that we are actually 7th most visited site on mobile internet in India!!!
Infact today 160by2.com is bigger than and ahead of some of more famous websites esp social networking websites with huge marketing budgets.
This is what makes success at 160by2.com sweeter - all our growth has been viral. There is only factor responsible for this - our user base - that is YOU!
Thank You, once again, for making 160by2 one of the most popular destinations in India, on both internet and mobile internet. We are always looking forward to your feedback, comments and encouragement so keep talking to us. Use our forums, blogs, email, whatever you like, but please dont holdback.
As a part of the One year, One Million celebration , we are pleased to announce the following winners:
Date User_Name
1/5/2008 anujsingh
2/5/2008 Tapanpatel1987
3/5/2008 ejaz_kgn
4/5/2008 Savitu
5/5/2008 manu.geet1
6/5/2008 soniadubey
7/5/2008 robinkumar
8/5/2008 vasanthanoble
9/5/2008 preetiahuja
10/5/2008 veraju
11/5/2008 chithnbharath
12/5/2008 timmy10
13/5/2008 kapilkrathod
14/5/2008 nikhilsharma261
15/5/2008 sruthireddy
16/5/2008 mayanksajwan
17/5/2008 piyushpreri
18/5/2008 sudipta234
19/5/2008 avmkumar
20/5/2008 gousepeer
21/5/2008 deepad
22/5/2008 rajeev.hind
23/5/2008 krgrss
24/5/2008 ex_ethen99
25/5/2008 nifamks
26/5/2008 aarti_pooja
27/5/2008 regini_gudiya
28/5/2008 anil.fresher
29/5/2008 jefrymon
30/5/2008 krishna_ajk
Congrats to all the winners. Please email your addresses to 160by2@smscountry.com so that we can deliver your gift hampers at the earliest.
Keep coming back to check who the daily winners are… We will be updating this list daily.
So, keep logging in & you could walk away with an ubercool iPhone
keep SMSing…
Addendum:
We have got a few queries on how we are selecting the winners.
We select the winners on a total random basis. So, if you have logged in to 160by2 from the site OR Widget from some other site OR through Mobile Application or from WAP site… You would be in the total list of users used for selecting the winner.
So, don’t worry.. Keep SMSing.. And every one has an equal chance to win.
Exactly a year ago, we started armed with just a thought that SMSing should be free. We have stumbled, we have bungled, but continuously learnt through the period. Now one year hence, we can proudly say, we have been successful.
Our belief has always been that “If you take care of your users, your users will take care of you.” And how true has it been! We have grown to a Million users in a little less than a year & where others have invested heavily in advertising, we have achieved this feat with NO Advertising at all.
This past year has seen a number of new introductions – Templates, WAP site, Widgets, Java Application, Email2Sms, near Instantaneous delivery, Reminders & Alerts, IPL alerts, Contacts & Intelli-text. A real Exciting Period Indeed.And each of these has been well received.
Our WAP site today sends over 60K msgs a day! What’s even outstanding is the fact that we have reached, close to 6 lakh mobiles through WAP alone.
But then none of this would have made sense, unless you guys had accepted & appreciated it. Thanks a lot for the trust you have shown in us!!!
In celebration of this achievement, we are pleased to announce the “One in a Million” offer for You, our users.
Whats the offer? Very Simple. Just log-in to the site and you could win Exciting gifts Every day. Further, there are bumper prizes including iPhone (Imported & Unlocked)
Whats the catch? Nothing. All you need to do, is Log-in.
So, Just remember to send FREE SMS to your friends… And who knows you may have your ubercool iPhone soon enough.
- all our growth has been viral. There is only factor responsible for this - our user base - that is YOU! 