For DailyGYAN, users have to confirm their subscription by sending GYAN<space>Start (to 09895974926). Once the server identifies the subscription, the mobile number of the user will be stored in the subscription database, and an acknowledgment message sent to them. After the subscription is activated, users start receiving daily nuggets of information from the date of subscription.

Innoz uses a long-code digit of ten numbers, which, Ravindran reveals, helps in reducing the pricing. Hence,{quotes} each SMS sent to Innoz costs the user only the normal SMS rate unlike the short code, which results in higher pricing.{/quotes} Google, too, has been toying around the idea of ‘SMS search’ for a while now, and has even launched an SMS-based search service recently. Ravindran is quick to point out: “We were the first to launch and have a daily subscription service.”

Students team up to innovate

Innoz is the initiative of a group of engineering students. The founders, Deepak Ravindran, Abhinav Sree (chief operating officer) and Ashwin Nath (chief software architect) are final year students of Computer Science at the LBS College of Engineering (Kasargod, Kerala), while Mohammed.Hisamuddin (chief innovative officer) has just completed his Computer Science degree from the same college.

While all the four co-founders of Innoz are passionate entrepreneurs, it was Ravindran who originally initiated ‘Swades Solutions’, a Web start-up in 2005. “Being student entrepreneurs is definitely not easy, but support from the college, teachers and friends has helped us a lot in this endeavour,” reveals Ravindran. He adds that they have been successful in switching gears between studies and work, and have had support from their parents too.

“Over the past few months the idea has become clearer to us, taking the company completely into the product development field focusing on the Web and mobile sector,” says Ravindran. “We are a self-funded student start-up that initiated the virtual incubation process and are the first offsite-incubated company in India.”

The team currently offers Web design and development for a number of projects. The revenues from bootstrapping for the first quarter (since the inception of the company) stood at Rs 0.2 million and are expected to grow exponentially in the coming days. New revenue streams are being created by the release of products that are currently in the beta stage in the labs.

Joining forces

Ravindran says that the team at Innoz works on a technically interesting, growing structured wiki, and attends a lot of start-up events, getting to meet and partner several companies within the start-up ecosystem. Though it hasn’t been long since its inception, Innoz has entered into relationships with leading technology firms like Sun, Intel and Microsoft.