Solutions Infini claims 2,500 paid customers for SMS-based services, eyes small acquisitions

Four-year-old Solutions Infini Technologies Pvt Ltd was started by Aniketh Jain and Ashish Agarwal after using an SMS-based integration for a college project. "We did a small college project, in that we felt the need of integrating SMS for various functions. We built a prototype of our flagship product at that time and that is when we were inspired to do it on a larger scale," recalled Jain.

SMS might be almost dead for the P2P communication (thanks to instant messaging apps) but Jain maintains that for businesses SMS is still the preferred medium. Solutions Infini's flagship product is a mobile messaging service that caters to all sectors from channel partners, SMEs to even enterprises.

It provides various services like email-to-sms, two-way messaging, SMS verifications, promotional services, enterprise messaging and more. Its clientele comes from across sectors like ecommerce, BFSI, IT, retail, FMCG, etc.

Talkingto Techcircle.in Jain, co-founder and CEO, Solutions Infini claims that the company has been profitable since day 1 and for the past 2-2.5 years the growth has been exponential. "We started with only two members; now we have a team of more than 100 people with presence in over 10 cities in India," he said. The company has also made its presence felt in global markets. It claims to be delivering messages to more than 1,000  network operators in over 180 countries.

Expanding portfolio

Taking the SMS-based solution forward, the company has launched two more services this year. Dialstreet, a cloud telephony service, was launched in April this year and has around 80 customers on board. "Dialstreet is our voice-based product. It integrates both voice and SMS for businesses. It is more or less like a virtual reception for businesses with all data stacked on the cloud for easy access," Jain said.  Though the product sounds very familiar to older players Knowlarity, Exotel, Ozonetel and the recently launched Freshfone (from Freshdesk), Jain claimed that the firm has more to offer since it integrates the SMS service in it.

The second product Infineo, an SMS-based mobile banking platform, was launched three months ago. It is aimed at the BFSI sector wherein verifications can be done via SMS. It enables banks and financial institutions to manage and control their mobile banking services as well. The product is currently  being used by two banks.

Numbers that matter

From being a two-member team in 2009 to a 100-member team now, Solutions Infini has grown exponentially. Currently, it delivers 275 million SMSes a month. The company now has over 2,500 paying customers for its mobile messaging service. "We closed the Q1 and Q2 of FY 2013-14 at $3 million and are looking to cross $7 million in revenues by the end of the fiscal year," Jain said.

While a company with such a story is most likely to be looking for funds to expand further, Jain said it is very cautious on that front. The company is profitable and doesn't need external funds. However, for further growth it may start looking for investments. "We are very specific to what kind of investments we want. We only want investors who would understand and align to our business completely. We are not looking for capital alone at this point of time," Jain said. He added that the firm is in no hurry to raise funds and will wait to see what kind of growth it can achieve for this financial year before approaching investors.

Meanwhile, the company is on a lookout to make acquisitions. To enhance its growth, the firm plans to acquire small but niche companies in the mobile segment. "We are interested in 2-10 people companies in the mobile space; it could be in VAS, mobile payments or any other mobile focused play," he shared.

Jain said IP messaging is the way forward. "We would be working to launch messaging services based on data. Though there is still at least five-eight years before SMS becomes redundant even for businesses, we realise that internet-based messaging is catching up and we would like to explore how we can use such messaging apps for our services," he said. He said that cost for internet-based messaging is almost 50 per cent lower than SMS which is a good reason to explore the area.

The coming year the firm would be enhancing its current set of products. Also on the anvil is DIalstreet's global expansion. While Jain counts several rivals across the firm's lineup of products such as Valuefirst, GupShup, Exotel and Knowlarity, he is confident that the firm's slow and steady growth will take it ahead of them.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)