So what do you do in a country where there are more than 650 million subscribers, but the mobile app reach is not even 2%. Each one of these subscribers are voice enabled and at the end of the day, voice drives 95% revenue of operators. Even the VAS industry is focused on the future of a few urban elite, while ignoring the larger base at the bottom.
Dialify, a startup by Nikhil Soman (ex-Zapak and BigAdda founder) strongly believes that sound/audio on its own is a very powerful medium and the company has launched audio gaming (IVR) products (first one being Cwicket).
Cwicket is an Audio Game designed for in-call delivery over telephony networks, bringing a new cricketing experience to all phone users across the country. NO Downloads, NO Data plans, NO GPRS, just a simple number to dial & play.
Audio gaming as a concept may sound odd – particularly because our lives are visually saturated. However Audio/Sound has some unique properties – sound perception includes spatial distribution awareness & multi-channel sensitivity, which implies multi-tasking. These are quite easily ignored or over-shadowed by the visual sense. Perhaps that’s why music is still such a big hit, and also why I cant imagine watching cricket on TV without the commentary & Movies sans music.
Built using CCXML/VXML, Cwicket is commentary of a cricket match that users play over a phone call (505101065 on Reliance GSM & CDMA Networks). Commentary is generated in real time, based on player(s) actions/Targeted placement points – specific actions, markets, player etc
The company has worked on building the next generation Interactive Voice Game Engine with support for turn based, strategy & role playing games. Future releases include dynamic environments, social publishing from within games, collaborative task completion, virtual items & Massively Multi-player Tournaments.
[Dialify is among the Startups Demoed at UnPluGGd]
