Company Culture:

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?

Hi all

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

Movie Name: Flight Plan

Bharathesh123, snehasis.patra, keith.apophis, sajidocean11

arvk20, amit9899, r_n_r, vijaykaran001, coolblazer88

amanagrawal, vinayakadl, zinzad, EddieNit, nagaraj.nnn

rajshah61, debikadey, amitava_160by2, kmlsh, AabidKhan84

rvn.ravindra, Jayeshgohil, satty, babin_subha, rox5

anoop_inet, sameer.ahuja, amitabh2k_b, soumya2home

nimishachandra, ashishca, vxinxavi, RANJAN_DU, supritmitra

sukhdev11, jolie, tomthayil, sukavira, gen_x12

praty23, tatulsen, baban_daddikar, abhi_joy, himanshuempi

Movie Name:Water Boy

aakil, satyamkoli, chatsrijesh, tarun_aries, fundu24

kaushik_bardhan, MOHSINBOSS, kabir4u208, vikashpanjiyar

anandshashank, tusharsmarty, shatabdi_d, papun_jibandeep

rony_dutta, gaurab21st, indra1987, amanjacob, meavirgo_1988

passey, installed, meets1, ajitvishwa, dj_sandy

escape2win, Hiteshdjain, cha_kumar, shubhamgarg, delhiguypraveen

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.

Happy SMSing!

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!!!

Check this link on Opera website for more details…

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.

Hoping your trust remains with us always,

Thanking you ALL!

160by2 Team

Yet another eventful month went by. Records were set, only to be broken AGAIN this month.

We added more than 2.5 lakh users, taking our registered base past 7 lakhs. But, the real measure, the number of mobiles we reached, has skyrocketed from 15.5 lakhs to 28 lakhs.

And if that was good, check the message count…. users sent over 1.3 Crore messages in March alone, a WHOPPING 77% growth over Feb.

And all this, in less than a year of operations…. Great, isn’t it?

All this, has been made possible only by the continued support from YOU guys, our users. Thanks a lot, everyone…

Our widget is now available on over 700 websites. Thanks a lot, for trusting us enough to add it on your sites/blogs.

Also, on the WAP front, we have added all the basic functions available on the Internet. So, you can now register, send messages, send templates & add contacts without going near a computer… Isn’t that an incentive to get GPRS connection Now??

The efforts are starting to bear fruit, with over 10% volume now coming from WAP. Same is the case with the J2ME Application as well… More news on that, as it happens.

We have also started a new service to help our users who have internet restricted in their workplaces… Any guesses???

EMAIL 2 SMS… Now, just email your sms text to us & we will deliver it to your friend.

Using this, you can now send FREE SMS to your friends anywhere in INDIA. Just email us with the following format:

Send the email to <receiver’s mobile number>@160by2.com,

In subject, enter your <username> or <mobile number>,

Enter the text you want to be sent across to your friend in the text box below the subject.

An image has been provided below to facilitate better understanding.

So, if you couldn’t use 160by2 because of Internet restictions, BREAK FREE ! and start sending FREE SMS to your friends across India.

Hope you will like this new feature as well…

Please keep those comments flowing….

Keep SMSing!!!

Recently, our CEO was interviewed on Mobile Advertising & the concept behind 160by2 by Nayanima basu of Indo-Asian News Service.

An excerpt of this Interview:

Want to send an SMS for free? Just click www.160by2.com.

“On one side were users who wanted free SMS and on the other side were brands and media companies trying to reach these consumers. Initially we ignored them but as the number increased, we realised that there was a genuine opportunity here, waiting to be exploited,” said Satya Kalyan Yerramsetti, CEO, SMSCountry Networks Pvt. Ltd.

For sending an SMS from 160by2.com, one needs to only fill up a simple registration form.

The name ‘160by2` was based on the concept that users can send free SMS of up to 80 characters while the remaining 80 would be utilised by advertisers, with both sides getting to use half of the mobile screen.

“The advertiser pays for the SMSs that are sent from the users to another mobile user. Thus every free SMS used by the user is subsidised by the advertiser,” Yerramsetti told IANS.

“There is a specific thing called the ‘Ad Serve’ engine, which intelligently understands what ad to be tagged into each user-generated SMS based on advertiser requirement and accordingly prices the advertisements,” he explained.

For example, one of the firm’s clients, McDonald’s, wanted to promote its delivery number in Mumbai. Thus every SMS that was being sent in Mumbai during the general lunchtime hours carried an ad stating: “Get a free McShake, call our toll-free number.”

“We haven’t yet monetised our website that has about 600,000 page views every day but we see a huge potential in monetising and offering contextual advertising,” he said.

The company has sales offices in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. It has run campaigns for almost 15 brands such as Cadbury, GSK, McDonald’s, Kingfisher Airlines, Jet airways and Force India F1 among others.

It is also keen to service the local retail market and is working in association with various media planning agencies such as Madison and Starcom IP.

“Our idea is to make SMS free for everyone in the country and every free SMS will carry an appropriate ad in it. So we are talking to a couple of telecom operators such as Airtel and Idea Cellular to offer SMS to their subscribers completely free and we will serve ads into the messages,” Yerramsetti averred.

It plans to start this initially in a few big circles and eventually roll out on a pan-India basis.

“As a pilot we might work in a couple of circles and when the operators see a huge revenue potential we will roll out across circles.”

160by2.com has over 450,000 registered users with the registrations growing at 30-40 percent month on month.

“We reached about 1.5 million mobiles in the month of February 2008 and served ads in about 60 percent of those SMS. About 30 percent of our recipient base is registered with 160by2,” he said.

Mobile advertising in India is still in a nascent stage offering huge potential waiting to be tapped.

“Today we see a few start-ups trying out different models but we do not look at them as competition. No one really understands the consumer needs and behaviour on this medium,” highlighted Yerramsetti.

“Hence, for us the competition is basically from global advertising giants like Google, Yahoo and MSN who are looking at entering the mobile advertising space. There are also the global mobile operators like Vodafone, T-mobile, who with their dwindling ARPUs (average revenue per users) want to get into future money-spinners like advertising on mobiles.”

It also has plans to serves ads into third-party mobile content providers like news, cricket, horoscope and stock alerts among others.

Other websites where the Interview was posted are:

Yahoo!, DNAIndia.com, Hindustan times, Zeenews, sify.com, among others.

Hey All…

Hope all of you@160by2 enjoyed the lil prank that we played on the All Fools Day!!

All of us out here were thinking as to what can we do to have some fun with our users on Fool’s day! Amongst lot of ideas thrown up, this one had everyone jumping:

Anyone who would log in to 160by2 site would be shown a message that 160by2 is now a paid service! This would get the user thinking, and then we would show a message – Gooooooogly! Happy Fool’s Day.

We took the same idea to our advertiser Cadbury Perk, who really liked it and sponsored the prank! Cadbury Perk is all about the lighter side of things in life – Take it lightly!

We also involved our users in a small contest- where we asked you to send the April Fools Templates to most number of friends and stand a chance to win a gift hamper sponsored by Cadbury Perk!!
We were successful in creating a buzz!! We received a few mails by some really impatient users who were shocked when they saw “160by2 is no longer free” screen!!

Most of our users enjoyed the prank and participated in sending number of template msgs to their friends and relatives! Here are the lucky ones who took it lightly… All of you will soon receive Cadbury Perk gift hampers.

We are happy to announce our 35 lucky winners :

fegade_ravindra, saravanan.ece, vikasluv, rakesh_gup, satish555, sachinv, rkapoor74,

zubinvania, mobinkeldho, raghu_143, mahemud, raj_rajendra, shankerganeshr,

Cliff-ton, kausain, saurabh.mundra, mun_mamani, Kanchan14.titli, rameezcm007,

kins8487, nakularora2007, loving_chandu, mehra_poonm, DhirajSingh, sunnyjamwal,

patilnilesh, vignesh275032, sharath.m, karthikkumar.s, rajatsahoo, raghubbd,

sunnybhoopendra, rashmita007, aarifali, mayuresh_777, deepak121185, Jek005,

alok724, Vishal11091 and zx_anuj!!