Via techcrunch:
Fresh off a $12 million investment, SMS GupShup
, a Twitter-like service in India that is primarily accessed via SMS, is launching an App Store. The store aims to expand SMS GupShup’s ecosystem by allowing developers to create SMS-based mobile applications based off of the microblogging service.
Launched in April 2007, SMS GupShup (spawned from Webaroo) serves 26 million users across India. The startup has seen rapid growth in users primarily due to the immense popularity of mobile devices in India. According to the startup, there are 550 million mobile phone users in the country and only 50 million web users. With a 10 to 1 mobile-to-PC ratio and SMS serving as the most popular communications platform, the market is ripe for SMS GupShup to take off. SMS GupShup currently processes over 480 million messages a month and accounts for 5 percent of all texts sent within India.
SMSgupshup free group SMS service has grown really popular in India. It is good to see them trying to innovate. The costs associated with sending SMS to shortcode could be an issue with a lot of these apps though. Would you pay 3Rs for each move in tic-tac-toe?