Rediff.com invests in Eterno
November 10, 2008 -- Business Wire India

Eterno founded by ex- Nokia employees, Umesh Kulkarni and Chandrashekhar Sohoni, today announced an investment from Rediff.com. Bangalore based Eterno is focused on mobile enabling print, radio and television media companies as well as mobile handset makers and mobile operators by providing connected' Mobile applications with Indian Language support on popular mobile operating systems such as Symbian, J2ME and BREW. Eterno's suite of innovative mobile applications include IndiSMS- an application which allows users to communicate in nine different Indian languages, viz Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil.

Airtel has adopted a regional language application, enabling customers to recieve communication from company in Hindi and four regional languages.This service is all set to enhance the concept of customer communication and is primarily aimed at making its services more inclusive.The regional languages include Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam

This services is available in two formats - picture messages and unicode. This platform is capable of sending messages in any indian language and is very user friendly.

CEO, Mobile Services, Bharti Airtel Ltd., Venkatesh V said, "This service enables us to reach out to customers in the language of their choice ". ENS

Hutch & Nokia come together to launch ‘INDISMS’
November 15, 2006 -- Money Control, EFY Times, DNA India

Hutch and Nokia today announced an alliance to offer – INDISMS - Local Language SMS service for Hutch customers who use Nokia phones. This service will enable Hutch post- & pre paid customers to send and receive SMS in Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil and Telugu, on their Nokia phones.

Speaking on the launch, Naveen Chopra, Chief Marketing Officer, Hutchison Essar Ltd. said, “We are extremely happy to introduce this unique service for our customers. We believe that communicating in one’s mother tongue is much convenient and lot of fun as it enables a person to be more expressive.”

Devinder Kishore, Director Marketing, Nokia India, said, “At Nokia, we are committed to connecting people. The launch of INDISMS with Hutch is a key step to connect with the diverse Indian audience and further enhance the Nokia users’ experience by allowing them to communicate in their native languages. Currently over 30 Nokia phones are equipped to support 9 Indian languages using this application. Going forward, our endeavour will be to expand this service to an even wider range of our phones.”

For the first time Hutch customers who use Nokia phones, will be able to send and receive SMSs in their local language. The customers can get this application by sending INDISMS as an SMS to 123 and downloading through the WAP link. The customer can also download the application by logging on to PlanetHutch and clicking on the INDISMS link. The application itself is free of cost, though the customer will be charged Re 1 and Paisa 60 only for downloading the ‘INDISMS’ application (regular GPRS charges of 10p/10 kb).

EternoDial in to Indisms. The simple downloadable language appli-cation for mobile phone users that translates Indian language words spelt in English into regional languages. Punch in ghar in the English alphabet on your mobile phone, and it will, for example, appear in the devanagari script on your Hindiphile friend’s phone. Indisms is the first product from Eterno Infotech, brainchild of Chandrashekhar Sohoni and Umesh Kulkarni. Friends from childhood, through engineering college and even post-graduation, the two IISc alumni have been down the start-up road before. In 1999, the two put together networking services firm Curis Networks. Within a year the company was snapped up by US-based Amber Networks and within another year, Amber was bought by Nokia for $ 440 million. Early last year, Sohoni and Kulkarni quit their high-paying Nokia jobs and set up Eterno. The firm will spe-cialise in software and systems solutions for mobile phone manu-facturers and operators, and is on the verge of tying up a deal with Nokia to provide English-Hindi Indisms.

In the pipeline are ‘south pack’ versions of the patent-pending Indisms application—featuring Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Sinhali and Hindi, a ‘north pack’ featuring Gujarati, Bangla, Oriya, Gurumukhi and Marathi, better video delivery solutions for mobile phones and language browsers. “We wanted to start with a small simple product,” says Kulkarni. “The text entry uses transliteration and the same keypad works for any selected language. As you type, both the English alphabet entry and the language transliteration will be displayed on the phone’s screen.’’ While receiving text messages on Indisms-enabled phones, users can set alerts for incoming Indian language SMS, view the message in the local language while also receiving regular English messages.

“Though most mobile manufacturers support Indian lan-guages, text entry is not in a standard uniform format,” says Sohoni. “It’s difficult to use and has never become popular. Also, till now, you’ve needed special keypads for different languages and you can-not accommodate more than two languages in the same handset.”

“The average Indian mobile user is well aware of handling an English phone menu,” says Kulkarni. “But he or she still wants to send and receive Indian language text mes-sages, news, greetings, infotain-ment.

As per the 2001 census, the 5 per cent mobile penetration has almost complete overlap with the 18-20 per cent English script aware population.’’ With most manufacturers and service providers eager to make the cellphone experience easier and more entertaining, Eterno’s should be an idea whose time is about to come. “Everyone we have spoken to agrees that languages can be a key component of value-added services,” says Sohoni. “We started with an SMS application, we have to see what all can now be added.’’