Ask HN: How to monetize free SMS notification service in India?

[swapsmagic]

We have a service through which we send out our users their indian railway ticket status updates. The updates goes through SMS/Email. 90% of our users provide us their mobile number to get the status update via SMS. But we haven't figured out yet how we can monetize those SMSes. Any idea/suggestion?

[bharathwaaj]

You can slowly move from this to cloud telephony sector offering SMBs sms feature. Competitive price and easy user interface along with analytics on ROI should provide an edge.

[swapsmagic]

I think, i didn't provide much information in the question. We have a website where user subscribe with their Mobile No. and Indian Railway PNR. We send them their PNR status updates via bulk SMS package which we have bought from some third party service. Now each SMS cost us money, but we didn't figure out how we can make money by sending SMS to thouse users. (i.e. putting advertisement in SMS, but didn't find any Ad network provide such feature for SMS).

[Sven7]

Talk to advertisers - groupm, jivox, timesgroup etc

Tell them you can provide ad targeting based on age/location/sex/income(based on age+compartment type)

Doors will open

[swapsmagic]

One question: How can we get age from the railway ticket number? I don't think indian railway discloses passenger age on their website.

[swapsmagic]

Thanks for the details. Will contact them for the advertisement.