Would you need / use a service that provides you a temporary phone number, which forwards calls made to it, to your real number ?
Say you posted an ad to sell your bike on a classifieds site and posted your real no. There maybe a scenario where you will continue to receive calls from buyers long after you have sold the product (and forgotten to delete the ad)
Or lets say you signup on a real estate portal to look for an apartment and need to enter your no to get in touch with the renter. Chances are quite high that you will continue to receive spam sms’s and calls long after you have found your apartment.
With a service like https://www.maskmyphone.com/ you get a temporary number for a few days which forwards all calls to your real number and ‘stops’ working after you cancel your account.
The question we are grappling with at the moment is, IS there a big enough potential market for a service like this in India ? There is a working prototype available at https://www.maskmyphone.com/ but it still needs some work in terms of design, content and payment gateway integration. Apart from that, the product is functional.
It will be great if you could share some feedback / pros / cons about this service 🙂
This app has been built by Sandeep as a weekend hack based on a requirement from his friend.
So why am I writing this post ? I saw this post on HSI and was quite excited about this service. Further he had asked if it was worth investing more time and money to scale this app. I got in touch and offered to help with some parts (design, marketing, capital etc) and give it a shot.
cheers
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
your site has TERRIBLE spellings… hope the product is not that bad also?
Simple to Use
just 3 steps for setup and you are good to go
Logs and Recordings
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal
Is Sandeep a member of therodinhoods?
Abhishek Bharadwaj
Dear Abhik
The idea seems cool and it can definitely turn out to be a genuine service. Here are my $0.02
1. The idea of pay per minute does not suit me well as I would become reluctant to receive more calls in that case. Better make it pay per month or pay per day with unlimited incoming calls.
2. start with some free credits e.g 1 day on pay per day model or 10 minutes on pay per minute model so that the user can himself check and verify the service before he actually starts to use it
3. Apart from extensions, if you can offer a separate plan with a unique 10 digit number for each user, that would really be cool.
4. And yes, there are lots of grammatical errors which I am sure you will correct.
Technical side
When I enter my mobile number for verification, I get this XML message which would be a nightmare to a non-Techie. Please fix this
Rest everything is OK.
Wish you a great going ahead
Abhi-
sandeep reddy
i am really sorry abt the typos and English had to complete every thing over a weekend to bring this prototype. this is not a complete finished product. i see to it that finished product will not have any such things.
sahil khurana
that could turn into fine invention, but i have one doubt about benefits that could be derived by your product by not so good people.i am really not that tech savy but as normal resident of country i just want to know how your product will classify between the actual customer and the one who is just using it for some wrong reason.as by reading it seems so easy.
do think about about this sir. take care
Aravind Gogineni
Hi Abhik,
That’s a good idea.
And if you can give the first “X” users some “trail” amount so that they can experience the service and then go for it without any hesitation. In return, make it a note that they give you feedback.
After all, it’s a new service and feedback might help you more to get started soon.
Regards,
Aravind Gogineni
Darshan Bhambiru
I Agree with what Alok and the others have pointed out here and the other individual posts
Even the Start up Home Page introduction paragraph has serious Mistakes in the Spellings make s a wrong impression if not anything other wise about the product and its creators: Maybe using the inbuilt Spell checkers or any other Spelling checkers before posting on the web site could be a better idea before publishing the content
“some times it so happens we need a temperay phone number for posting an ad on classified site or on a matoriminal site,this app helps you in generating a phone number and forward all calls to that number to your mobile phone with out revelaing your personal contact number”
“
How it works
when you sign up for the server. you will get a Masking number like 08030412941 and an ext: 103 when you can share this number insted of your personal number. so when some make a call to the above number and key in the extension code. you will recive the call on your personal number. once the call end’s your Balance amount in the portal will be decucted accordingly.”
Capitalization of the First Character of the Line / Sentence and other grammatical errors need to be completed Immediately to start with for a Start.
Though a nice idea on the anvil, would this be a Long term Horse in the race to a service which has only a Temporary use ? how would it support itself, there would always be a new Customer search on to make this profitable right ?
I think http://www.cloudline.in also has similar or More services made available, had interacted with them for some of my recent requirements but that did not work out cause it was Cloud based so had to work some thing otherwise though worth checking for your purpose. Another Global contender on similar lines the services which I use for International (USA) requiremnts for my line of work is https://www.icall.com/
Good Luck to Abhik and Sandeep on taking this further a lot needs to be seen before the output can be Judged as well.
Anshoo Grover
I think this is a very useful service and worth all the time and money you might put in it. I checked Sandeep’s post and saw that the investment is quite reasonable. It is worth repeating that grammatical errors must be corrected. More illustration of the service on the ‘how it works’ page would definitely help.
People have suggested inclusion of a trial – I currently don’t see how the traditional trial would solve your money-making problems since it is temporary service in the first place.
Selling this – position it as ID protection/privacy app. It might do a world of good to your sales if you can tie-up with companies like 99acres/olx/sulekha etc. This way you would get a steady stream of traffic automatically (I see new customer acquisition as the most important problem for you – hence overcoming your biggest hurdle). You may sell the partnership to these sites as a differentiation. I am sure a lot of companies would be interested in providing privacy protection services to their consumers.
Revenue model – listen only to the numbers – your trial users should generate some kind of data, base your pricing on that. If you can partner with one of the above companies, you may be able to get much more data/insight from them.
Do let me know if I can help anymore. All the best.
Abhik Prasad
Thanks Alok. This site is just a week old and needs a complete re haul in terms of design and copy.
The current workflow is similar to what you have suggested and users will get complete call logs and recordings.
What we were really looking for is, whether this app could solve a ‘pain point’ for a large number of users as it did for Sandeep’s friend.
In your opinion, do you think privacy is a pain point for most cellphone users in India ?
Thanks.
Sumit Deshpande
Here are my 2 cents
Pros: 1. Great idea, i would definitely lap up to this as the pesky marketing calls keep on coming long after the purpose is solved.
2. Maintains privacy, no need to reveal your real number.
Cons:
1. I hate to be forced to log in using my FB account. I was about to sign up but when I saw the FB account requirement, I stopped.
2. I dont like extensions. It should be a real 10 digit number
3. I should get a long term plan if I need. Say for a month or 2 months. This will help me to plan other activities using the phone number.
4. I dont know how will you take care of the legal aspects in case the phone number is misused for illegal purposes.
Hope this helps.
Nameet Potnis
If you would like me to help you with the Copy, let me know
sandeep reddy
Hey thanks for the feedback.
we will have other ways to login in the finial project. as FB login is easy. just did that in the prototype.
2. giving new number is not possible because of legal aspects as of now 🙁
Abhik Prasad
Darshan,
Thanks for your inputs. We will get the copy fixed in the final site if we do decide to go ahead.
Did some research online and MMP will be more along the lines of https://burnerapp.com/
cheers
abhik
Abhik Prasad
Abhishek,
yes, we will need to figure out the pricing model as not too many users maybe comfortable paying per minute…but if you look at the intended application of this, in the overall scheme of things, it may cost you only Rs 100-200 for an ad (assuming you get around 10 calls of 10 mins each)…not too big a price to pay if it saves you from a ton of spam calls in the future
we wanted to go with individual cell nos but govt. regulations dont allow temporary nos without KYC norms…which will just make it more expensive and cumbersome for clients..we can look at it as a premium option though.
the sms gateway is also not fully configured and it takes some time right now for the verification codes to be delivered. In the live site, we dont expect to have the code you saw above.
Thanks again for your inputs.
cheers
abhik
Abhik Prasad
Thanks Sahil.
We need more folks playing the devil’s advocate 🙂
can you outline some potential scenarios where you think a service like this could be misused…It will def help us in our validation process.
Abhik Prasad
Thanks Aravind,
We will try and plan pricing based on your feedback to drive initial traction.
Abhik Prasad
Thanks Anshoo.
Yep, the typos and design will be updated.
Right now we want to push this as a consumer app as selling to enterprises is a different ballgame…but yes, we will def look at it in the future if there is sufficient consumer traction/
Abhik Prasad
Thanks Nameet. We will def touchbase incase we get stuck 🙂
Abhik Prasad
Sumit,
The fb login was to get to a quick prototype. I myself hate fb logins and we will have an alternative.
There will be different tiered plans.
And yes, we need to figure out a way to give out real 10 digit nos…wish things were as easy here as they are in the US 🙁
sahil khurana
hahahahah i liked the word DEVIL’S ADVOCATE
1. like someone who is already using some number on wrong id and further attains your service too, it will be a boon in disguise. one is already misleading the authorities and this could help him to easily get away away after doing a deed, meanwhile they will be looking for that number you have provided, they couldn’t even think of the fact that number they are actually tracing does not exist on first note, even somehow they cracked that with the help of some rodinhood as we knew about that on first hand!!! still that person must have escaped by then.
the list of those who can use it is very long , starting from politicians to hard core criminals. i have checked again as you said that only calls could be forwarded but still in jugadu country like INDIA no invention is so smart to outsmart indians….
take care, and when it come to use i will love to be your early customer.
Mahesh Khambadkone
I think it’s a great technology looking for solutions. I say that in a positive way : check out the latest on Facebook tying up with Orange to allow groups to talk to one another without knowing their numbers.
You could take your tech to popular websites, and have a widget to let users who enter their numbers to use maskmyphone instead. e.g. on chat sites like StepOut, on magicbricks.com.
Somehow I feel this would work more as a technical solution for a portal / existing business, than something that majority of consumers would seek (considering it inherently hides identity and therefore opens you up to spam).
Any thoughts of it being a voice mail / vanity number system? Custom ring-tones that I as a user can upload? Store messages people leave for me ? The handle I own could be lika a BBM-id I operate and share.
Mandar Joshi
I have been trying to use your service but unable to move forward Sign Up page. I am trying to login with Facebook but its constantly throwing error messages since almost a week. I am using Mac OS Lion and My browser is Safari 6.0.2
sandeep reddy
i have discontinued the service. as it was not viable for me to run and test it out in the market.