Flashcall, a service that focuses on connecting consumers with brands through missed calls, has come up with an irresistible offer for businesses in Ramzan. Now businesses can sign up to explore the immense potential of toll free consumer interaction through missed calls without any contract or monetary obligation.
For those who aren’t familiar, Fashcall is service that allows customer initiates the communication through a missed call – that is free of charge – and then businesses can responds to the customer by any possible means suitable to them (call/SMS or anything else).
Flashcall’s this Ramadan offer includes unlimited and unrestricted access to flashcall panel, two free numbers for the campaign, real time analytics and reporting. Any third party service, however, will be charged with usual rates.
Elaborating the offer, Jawwad Jafri, CEO of Flashcall, said “We are seeing immense interest in flashcall from industry and the use cases that businesses are developing for us are surprising even for us. The concept of missed call is so simple that every business owner or brand manager takes no time in relating it to their business objectives. However, we saw that committing a cost to digital solutions becomes difficult for some managers. We have therefore decided to lower the barriers for the players who are still sitting on the fence and let them experience the simplicity of our consumer model and the power of our analytics during this offer. ”
Flashcall recently managed to generate a lot of buzz during Startup Weekend Islamabad, where it was used for live voting as well as subscription services.
This Ramzan offer is geared to further fuel this interest. It works across industries and has solutions for customers, employees and senior management. Some of the solutions in which Flashcall is actively engaged involve:
- TV Channels
- For ratings of their programs (alternate to people’s meter)
- Interactive Q/A with audience during programs
- Financial Institutions
- For personalized services (bank account details, last payment, payment due)
- Lead generation ( to use as CTA in brochures and reduce cold calling)
- FMCG brands
- Consumer engagement campaigns
- Measuring their media plan effectiveness
- NGOs and Social Sector
- Building a support base and communicating & mobilizing them
- Online stores
- Cash on Delivery verification
- Deals to drive traffic
To sign up for this free offer, you can visit www.getflashcall.com and sign up free!
Three are no two free numbers at all! Signup and you will be amazed to get 0 own numbers. Awain darama!
Hi Ahmed,
To avoid any misuse of the service, we are giving away two numbers after identifying the business and the service to be used. I am responding to each request personally and we will make sure every genuine business gets two free numbers. If you have received a welcome email from me, please respond to it and my team will get back to you.
Regards,
Jawwad Jafri
CEO
Flashcall
Jawwad,
Its best if you state things completely. Its ironic that you want to avoid the misuse of your service when the foundation of your business is misusing the telecom service. Hypocritical much?
HI XE,
I respect your opinion but in our opinion using missed calls to communicate is a very smart idea. Whether we communicate this way with our friends and family or with the businesses that matter to us.
Jawwad,
Of course, in your opinion it is a “very smart idea”. You are taking part of a paid service and abusing it AND profiting off of it. You could have a stronger argument if this was for personal use, between friends and family, but you are commercially capitalizing off of this ABUSE of a service. I say abuse rather than misuse because you are depriving telecom businesses of some revenue to put into your own pockets. So it is a “very smart idea” in the same way that charging people to set up an illegal electric connection for them is a “very smart idea”.
I wouldn’t be surprised if telecom lawyers started looking into this blatant misuse of services.
Do tell me this though, did you get this “very smart idea” yourself or did you just copy the Indian company “Zipdial” work?
Unfortunately, you did not spend much time in studying our business model otherwise all your concerns would have been answered. The flashcall model does not deprive telecoms of any revenues, in fact it increases it multiple times. However, this revenue does not come from the end consumer but from the corporations who value their interaction with customer. Every missed call that we receive has an action assigned to it…either a response sms, a response call or an ivr interaction. All these are paid services for which telecom operators charge. All we are doing is to make it free for consumers to interact with companies and brands and providing insights to companies and brands about their consumers and providing a platform through which they can engage later on.
To answer your second question Zip Dial has developed its services on the same model. We did come across zipdial during our initial research however this product has been made solely by a Pakistani team through our own R&D and our expertise in this area. You will be glad to know that asia’s largest telecom blog techinasia has featured us at number 4 in techinasia’s 17 startups that caught our eye series
http://www.techinasia.com/asian-startup-list-29-june-2014/
Really? You came up with the exact same idea as an Indian company that emerged around early last year? You aren’t even going to admit you were “influenced” or “inspired” by them? Mashallah, what an honest CEO.
> The flashcall model does not deprive telecoms of any revenues, in fact it increases it multiple times.
If it wasn’t for Zipdial, people would be calling businesses, not the other way around. For you to say it increases it multiple times is like Hollywood saying “piracy kills potential sales”. What figures do you have to say it increases it? How can you possibly say that?
> However, this revenue does not come from the end consumer
So you admit that you are depriving the company of revenue from the end consumer. At least admit it.
> All we are doing is to make it free for consumers
By misusing part of telecom service by using it in a way that it was never intended. Nothing is “free” in this world, except copying an idea from ZipDial India.
Tell me, is this what the missed call services was designed for? Do you really think that this is not abuse of a service? I don’t even like the telecom companies, but this is an open and shut case. I guess you are cashing in until telecom lawyers shut you down?
You forgot to answer the question btw, did you get this “very smart idea” yourself or is this just Zipdial copy pasted?
You must be totally retarded. The customer gets a call back. So its not a loss for revenues at all. The only thing switched is the model. Instead of the customer calling, its the business who calls back.
This is in line with their position of flashcall increasing sales, the inverse of the software companies saying “piracy causes lost revenues”. They cannot say it increases business, because what are they comparing it with.
I am surprized to see you repeating the mantra of loss of revenue for Telecom companies.
If we follow your approach then every innovation kills an existing idea, and in your words, causes loss of revenue to people associated with that older idea. You need to keep pace with the world to be competitive otherwise you are out of market. When the mobile service was not common, pay phone service was everywhere and making a lot of bucks but you do not see any of these services anywhere in Pakistan. How about those companies who were associated with that service that is repealed now? They had to pivot to a new idea or close their shop.
Telcos need to be innovative and introduce something which is stronger than the idea Flashcall presented. If these folks cannot be more innovative, they will be out of market as well.
>If we follow your approach then every innovation kills an existing idea,
Not true. Innovations that arent a misuse/abuse of a previous service are fine. There aremany innovations that are legal. Please don’t bend and twist my words.
Telcos are free to file a case against Flashcall for abuse/misuse of their services, if there is any. But until then, kindly refrain from calling it illegal.
Should I spend much time studying your business model or ZipDials?
>http://www.techinasia.com/pakistan-startup-flashcall-missed-calls/
In India, a startup called ZipDial saw the potential in missed calls for businesses and grew its marketing platform around these gestural pings. It provides brands with a toll-free number that allows them to communicate with customers via missed calls, sending back SMS to people containing more information. Now a new startup in Pakistan called Flashcall is aiming to do the same thing in its home nation of 130 million mobile subscribers.
Lets see. :-)
Good luck Jawad :-)
You seems to be the only one on entrepreneurial path out of entire MBA batch ;-)
Paid article,,,,, Correct me if m wrong