Free calls with Freekall

 

By Sweta Nair From Christ University , Bangalore What do I pay for this call? Nothing at all! Gone are the days when we needed the magic of internet to connect to our friends for apparently free web run apps. These free apps, run by not so free or cheap internet recharges, might soon crash and burn when Freekall hits the market after a month. Let us go back to the beginning. One fine day, a group of four engineers-- Yashas Shekhar, Sandesh E, Vijay Umaluti and Sabari Jagadeesan- left their jobs. Not just any jobs, lucrative salary and corporate perks to give shape to new ideas. They thought big and started small. From developing web based applications for small companies, they gradually began shaping and giving form to Freekall. And as history has seen it several times before and future will see many a times ahead, there emerged a story that the writers like us love to write. These Bangalore based basketball lovers spent a liberal chunk of a year moulding their plan into action until December last year. Freekall is an app that will allow the users to give calls any where any time without being charged. It brings voice over internet (VoIP) to people who do not have access to internet. All one has to do is give a missed call to the Freekall number. They would then receive a call from the company server enabling them to dial any number and talk for as long as the caller wants. As of now this app successfully offered 600,000 free calls in a span of 5 days during its trial run. Image credit: cdn1.yourstory.com The only catch, though, is that the users will have to listen to the advertisements every two minutes. This should not be much of a problem for us. We Indians, after all, love the free stuff, don't we? It won't be wrong to say that we are the kind who watch and read advertisements the moment we see the word 'FREE' written anywhere around them. The world is filled with people who buy a Rs 500 pack of detergent, even though they don't need it, just because they will get a free Tupperware. As of now, the plan is to provide around million calls a day and are expected to achieve their target revenue of Rs185 crores through advertisements. In December, last year, Ranjit Cherickal, former head of Nokia Siemens, Africa, poured in an investment of ten lakhs into this innovative concept. For sure millions of users would welcome the advertisements for a limitless call free of any charges. Also these advertisements would add more topics to talk upon. It certainly is too early to predict the success or failure of this app but it will without a doubt turn heads when properly out in the market. Want to blog for us? Please click here. Image credit: qph.is.quoracdn.net