What was the trigger for the idea?
Jana’s name means “people” in Sanskrit. The company wants to give a billion people in the emerging world access to free Internet.
The Jana story began in 2006, when I was working as a Fulbright Professor in Kenya. Blood supplies in rural areas were limited, so me and my students built an SMS system to enable local nurses to make their needs known to officials running the centralized blood banks.
It was a great success initially, but soon the number of SMS messages declined. We realized why. Rural nurses couldn’t afford the mobile airtime. So we created software to allow the system to automatically replenish the nurses for the cost of the messages. A switch flipped: the nurses enthusiastically returned to sending updates.
From this insight — that smartphones can be used as a platform not only for global communication, but also global compensation — Jana was born.The company has gone from the blood bank in Kenya, to delivering the lifeblood of modern communication in emerging markets.
What is the technology behind the app?
mCent is an Android-only app available in 15 markets. The app has integrated into the backend billing systems of 237 mobile operators, so it can credit over 3.48 billion mobile users. In India, mCent has integrated with every telco, which means that anyone, with any Android phone, can access the app. Through Jana, hundreds of companies benefited from over 1.5 billion megabytes of app usage (the equivalent of 3,000 years of app usage) in 2014 alone.
How this differs from internet.org?
Internet.org is a walled garden. You get free usage of apps within the product, but Facebook chooses which apps are free. Jana’s model is very different. The company reimburses app users for downloading and using an app, but the reimbursed data can then be used anywhere on the Internet, unrestricted.
Additionally, users get additional free data on top of what it cost them to download or try an app within mCent. This free data can also be used however they choose; users can surf the web, download a new app, or watch a video. Instead of making Wikipedia or Facebook free for all, Jana wants to make the entire Internet more affordable to everyone and at the same time, make it less costly for people to explore fun and useful new apps.
When the debate about net neutrality is growing, will your app work?
Jana is in full support of net neutrality. It is true that the content within mCent is sponsored by companies who wish to drive usage of their apps; however, the free data that Jana gives to mCent users can be used for anything. People who earn free data through mCent can use that data in any way they wish, unrestricted and unlimited – it can be used to download any app, browse any website, download any video... While other initiatives present a 'walled garden' where free Internet is limited to a small sliver of the Internet’s content, Jana’s approach is an open one.
Another important point to mention is that Jana works with app developers of all sizes — from small, local app developers in India, to large global brands like Amazon and Tencent.
What would be the revenue model?
The fee structure for app developers working with Jana is performance based. There are no upfront fees. If a certain number of people download and use an app, the app developer pays Jana a fee for the amount of users that signed up.
