[kamaal]

Well Indian customer is always a price conscious one though. Like it or not, we are that way. Remember those days people used to make pre agreed arrangements, and just make the communication acknowledgements though missed calls?

So eventually if you want to be profitable and sell more services, you have to offer a good price.

It's just the way it is. I even know people who look at fares and then decide if they want to take their own two wheeler or an Ola. Online food delivery works the same way. People hunt for deals and only order through that.

Sure some people pay for services. But those are generally rare.

[questionfor]

> Remember those days people used to make pre agreed arrangements, and just make the communication acknowledgements though missed calls?

Can you elaborate how did that work? I never heard about this method

[intended]

A classic example from a business perspective: Poorer users had no money to waste calling people up - but incoming calls were free.

So firms would advertize a missed call number on the radio.

People could give that number a missed call, and they would soon get a call back from the firm - thus never spending any money at all.

The more common interpersonal example was one person having more money than the other, or being on a company plan - so they would get missed calls from their family/friends, and they would then call back.

The cost was thus borne by the firm/richer person/person with more talk time.

[nsm]

Say you want to tell your mom once you safely reach school (via public transport). But you don't actually want to spend the money on a call or text (India did not have "unlimited text", at least when I was growing up there). So your mom and you agree on a protocol that "one missed call means I reached safely". Now you just call her and disconnect immediately. Message received.

[reachtarunhere]

Hypothetical Example: I would tell my dad that I'll give a missed call and let it ring just thrice once I got safely to University from home.

Actual Example from my life: My dad had a cellular plan that had lots of free minutes of calling. So, I would just give him a missed call and he would call back. This was the early 2000s I think.

[psds2]

You would tell me "if I am able to make it to the movie tonight I will leave you a missed call around 2pm" and then neither party pays for a telephone call or sms.

[bogidon]

We called this “beep”ing in Romania. Apparently it was widespread across developing contries [1]

[1] https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/article-pdf/13/1/1/22316427/jj...