"Airtel City Search" Powers Local Search Services in India Across 3 Media Screens

Airtel is the first telecom company in the world to deploy a multi-mode, multi-platform local search service

Many telecom operator around the world are either offering or trying to offer location-based and local search services to their users. The Indian operators have also woken up to the power of local search. Airtel, India’s largest private telecom service provider is all set to power city search services in India. The operator partnered with asklaila, India’s first local information service on 13 November 2008. With this strategic partnership, Airtel has pioneered to be the first telecom company in the world to deploy a multi-mode, multi-platform local search service; the service is available across 3 screens – the mobile (Airtel’s mobile service), the PC (Airtel’s broadband service) and the TV (Airtel DTH); and within the mobile service, across 4 modes – SMS, USSD, WAP and Airtel Live.

The service will enable Airtel customers to get up-to-date information about their city, free of cost, through asklaila’s extensive city information database. The asklaila-powered ‘Airtel city search’ will reach more than 30 million users across the six cities where asklaila is available, including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Bangalore. The mobile-based local information search will be supported by targeted, relevant advertising, based on the users’ intent identified through the search query.

Sanjay Gupta, Chief Marketing Officer, Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel said, “It is Airtel and asklaila’s joint belief that a non-intrusive, intent-driven advertising model, with the consumer in mind, is the way forward on the mobile platform. This partnership has the potential to revolutionize the market dynamics in mobile advertising.”

Kiran Konduri, co-founder, asklaila added, “We have seen tremendous growth in the usage of our service and having telecom leader Airtel as our partner will help us reach many more users, besides giving a significant fillip to mobile advertising and the use of mobile devices to search for city information.”

How the Airtel AskLaila Service Works:

• SMS: Airtel users can text the keyword to get accurate city information. For example, ‘locate pizza gurgaon’ and SMS it to 54321 to get relevant local information free of cost.
• Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD): USSD is a faster channel than the text-messaging platform and GPRS. This is an instant messaging type phone service and can be used in even basic phone models. This is accessible under Airtel Live USSD portal by dialing *321#
• Airtel Live: Local search will be integrated in the Airtel service menu, under the Airtel Live brand.
• WAP: A special, mobile-friendly user interface powers the asklaila WAP portal that is available through any Airtel GPRS-enabled handset

The mobile search features of asklaila are optimized to make local information more user-friendly and accessible to Airtel customers. The key points that have to be noted about this service are:

• proximity search – Results include not only the searched-for locality but also the locality nearby
• syntax-free search option - ‘Pizza Cannaught Place’ and ‘Cannaught Place Pizza’ will give the same results
• support for Indian SMS lexicon (ex. nr – Near, Nxt – Next, CCD – Café Coffee Day)
• understands locality short forms (CP - Cannaught Place)
• address compression that enables users to see more results in less SMSs
• enables users to choose the level of details they want to see
• landmark information that provides last mile locators 
• allows attribute-tagged search like ‘24 hours pharmacy’, ‘Roof top restaurant’
• hyperlinks to help navigate quicker within result set

The multi-mode mobile version of Airtel city search, powered by asklaila, will effectively address two major challenges - providing accurate, credible and actionable local information; and ground-up mobile-specific enhancements to leverage the advantage of multiple mobile modes. This partnership will enable users’ phones across price ranges – from an entry level INR 2,000 handset to a high-end, feature rich INR 35,000 mobile phone. The user experience is consistent and simple across all 4 modes, giving the user freedom to select an appropriate mode based on need and context.

Source: moneycontrol.com

All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced on this site belong to their respective companies.

Mobile2Mobility has joined forces with TradePub.com to offer you a new, exciting, and entirely free professional resource. Visit http://mobile2mobility.tradepub.com today to browse our selection of complimentary Industry magazines, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and more from telecom and mobile industry. No credit cards, coupons, or promo codes required. Try it today!