The Hindu Business Line : On a Net drive

Thomas John is into deep-sea fishing, skiing, swimming and long rides on his Royal Enfield 500. A graduate in physics and computing mathematics from Bombay University, he likes to study about high-end audio systems and developments in propulsion systems.

But, right now, his mind is filled with Ooha, a new venture to provide Internet access using kiosk infrastructure. So much so, that when I call John on a Sunday afternoon, he is on the road, tying up the details for Ooha’s soft launch at a Chennai mall, to ensure that the service is available to visitors from February 11.

“The Internet is so powerful that everybody needs to use it to the fullest extent. Which is where Ooha comes in, by making the machines an organic platform available in the public domain,” he argued, when we had met a few days ago over an ‘aha’ lunch.

“The LCD monitors at Ooha stations will run your ads almost on a 24 x 7 depending on locations and intelligent ad projections,” offers www.oo-ha.com. Obviously, John is concentrating on advertising as the only form of revenue. “We expect to break even in one-two years’ time. We have worked out an advertising rate package that will be beneficial to all concerned,” claims John, as the CEO of Ooha Services India Private Ltd.

“We plan to deploy about 100 kiosks in Chennai in the next six months and then expand the service slowly to other metros (Mumbai and Bangalore) and tier-two cities (Pune, Kochi, Hyderabad, etc) in the South.”

Thomas John

On the long night before the launch, John keeps awake to answer a few questions over e-mail.

Excerpts:

First, the trigger for the idea and the name. Also, the pain-points that pushed you into it!

In 2003, when I was in India on work, the hotel that I was staying in had a network failure. So I stepped out to search for a cyber café, and I finally found one after driving around for an hour. The funny thing was that there was a cyber café just behind the hotel I was staying in. Also, the people whom I checked with were not really aware of its existence. That set me thinking of the need for an ecosystem similar to that of STD/ISD booths in the 1990s before the cell-phone era.

We initially started by thinking of creating similar Internet booths and charging the customer a fee. But then we decided against that model because we felt that as of today, in India, the Internet is not an essential service that people cannot live without. We feel as far as India is concerned, the Internet will have a more organic growth and spread based on the value the end user is deriving from it. The only way we could give it free of cost is by combining it with something such as advertising which would indirectly benefit the user and for which he/she does not have to pay. I give full credit to my partner for having thought of the name ‘Ooha’, which is about imagination. The platform being organic, one can utilise it for anything and everything — be it running an advertising campaign, conducting market research, or testing a new product.

Do you find acceptance to the idea from the commercial establishments where you would like Ooha to be present in? What are the challenges?

I would say the response is rather mixed. We approached a few commercial locations and they would like us to pay them a monthly rent. We, in fact, expected this reaction from commercial property owners because they might not be able to see the immediate benefits that an Ooha station will bring to them. We are confident that everyone — which includes retailers, mall owners, companies, advertising agency and of course the customers and users of this kiosk infrastructure — will benefit from it. The best part of the whole infrastructure is that it is an open platform for people and companies to experiment on.

Can you talk about the funding, and more exactly, the difficulties in funding a venture such as Ooha?

We found an investor whom we did not have to convince much. We met him in Coimbatore in his office and in the course of the presentation he pulled out his calculator and did the math and said he is in. We did not finish the presentation.

As far as VCs (venture capitalists) are concerned, they are more focused on traditional portal/core technology business and are not too keen on an idea like ours.

What advantages do you foresee for businesses in using the Ooha platform?

Ooha believes in extreme micro localisation. According to us, companies spend billions of dollars in advertising their products and services without being able to measure the true success of a campaign. Similarly, if you today walk into any mall or other entertainment facilities, you see advertisements and promotional offers that are not relevant to what is being sold in that particular location. We are here to change that.

With the Ooha platform, companies and agencies can now inform customers of the range of products available in a particular location they are visiting, persuade or remind the customer to purchase the product by constantly bringing the product to their attention in a subtle and personalised form without disturbing the customer.

Are there innovative applications that you can envisage?

One area we are working on is to narrowcast alerts and other essential emergency broadcasts. This particular service will be available probably in the near future. For instance, say, a prominent hospital is in urgent need of B-ve blood. Today, they will inform the relatives and the relatives, in turn, will try to use SMS facilities to broadcast it to their friends and relatives, etc. How about the hospital staff walking over to the Ooha kiosk located in their very own lobby and inputting this message and then choosing the locations they would like to broadcast or narrowcast this message? And the great thing is that these messages will flash on all the 100 kiosks located in Chennai.

A similar service can be used for community broadcasting (such as public announcements). Other commercial services we plan on introducing are: Discounts and coupons, telephony services, registry services, location and directory services.

But again, as I have said before, this is an open platform and anyone who is interested in experimenting any kind of innovative idea can use it.

On the design of Ooha kiosk
We found that people, in general, miss out on small things. This is the case when you walk into the Chennai airport departure section. There happen to be five-seven types of kiosks offering different types of functionality. But many of us are oblivious to the existence of these kiosks.
Also, we felt that people find new technology or devices in public domains intimidating to approach. So we wanted a kiosk one can associate with. Our kiosk looks inviting and gives the user a sense of security and privacy. We have designed it in such a way that it can fit into corners or against a wall.
Will Ooha go to school?
Yes, we will be introducing Ooha kiosks in schools/colleges and other educational institutions very soon. At this moment we are experimenting with a few concepts and once we are certain about it we will approach schools and colleges. We would like to make sure that our platform is completely secure in every respect before we introduce it in educational institutions.
Prior to starting Ooha, John started on an entrepreneurial phase in 1996 with ProgramX LLC; the company deals with supply chain management, enterprise application integration, service oriented application (SOA) and workflow. Earlier, he worked in the US with Verizon as a Consultant for three years and as a senior member, Technical Staff, for two years; and with Fox and TV Guide, for two years.
He began his career in India with IMRB during college as research analyst in the early 1990s and then moved on to space selling in DSJ, and also worked as a software engineer in Rediff.com and Planetasia.

dmurali@thehindu.co.in

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