India's very own push mail service — Bharat Berry — is helping to take this cost-effective and productive mobile-based service to masses across India. What is better? The service is not limited to a particular kind of handset.
Launched in association Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) in November last year, this service is handset-neutral, supporting as it does smartphones across various categories. Thus, a person is not required to change his handset before opting for the push mail service.
Developed by Bharat Berry Technologies, the service is on the lines of the popular BlackBerry services offered by the Canada-based Research In Motion (RIM). It is affordable, with data plans as low as Rs.2 a day, and has a pan-India reach, thanks to BSNL's mammoth network. This combination of factors has been a key to attracting people to email-on-the-go without a laptop or broadband connection.
“We launched the Bharat Berry service in association with BSNL with one goal: to provide push mail service to every common man in India… and since November last, we already have over 1.5 lakh BSNL users sending their subscription requests. BSNL has over 9 crore subscribers… the market potential is huge,” said Nitin Walia, Bharat Berry Technologies Director (Sales and Marketing).
Pointing out that the Bharat Berry service was available pan-India as the company already had a tie-up with another PSU, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), that operated in Delhi and Mumbai, Mr. Walia said that at present the service supported over 3,000 smartphones available in India of various makes, while efforts were on to make more handsets compatible to their services.
The push mail service provides an always-on capability by which new emails are actively transferred. The advantage with Bharat Berry is that it provides over the air back-up of the user's contacts, tasks, calendar and notes. Moreover, it can also sync with MS Outlook on a user's computer, and the service is compatible with various operating systems.
“As mobile data connectivity is improving and data usage is growing, more and more customers are looking for push mail solutions on their mobile handsets. Our tie-up with BSNL gives cost advantage as its data charges are the least, compared with its competitors. We hope that our service will help people, particularly school and college students and youth, in semi-urban and rural areas,” Mr. Walia said.
In Mauritius soon
Talking about future plans, Mr. Walia said Bharat Berry was soon going to go abroad as the company had inked an agreement with Mahanagar Telephone Mauritius Limited (MTML), a subsidiary of MTNL. “We are also in talks with some foreign operators, and soon we might see our services being introduced in other nations.”
