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MSG91, enabling businesses deliver automated SMS

Recently, we got an opportunity to talk to Pushpendra Agrawal, the founder of Walkover Web Solutions. Pushpendra talks about one of his products, MSG91 – An Enterprise Communication Platform. He talks about his product strategy of bringing all communication services (SMS, Email & Voice) under a single Omnichannel platform to stay ahead of changing businesses and their customers’ needs.

Briefly tell us about your product?

Pushpendra:MSG91 is an Enterprise Application to Person (A2P) Communication Platform providing SMS, Email & Voice Communication Solutions. MSG91 provides APIs, plugins, and panel so that businesses can send OTPs, Transactional SMS, Regional SMS, Transactional Emails via a robust gateway throughout the globe.

What are the key problems you solve for today’s businesses?

Pushpendra: MSG91 started as an initiative allowing businesses to send SMS for Transactional and Promotional purposes to their customers, without any detailed knowledge of coding or anything technical. It’s like you log in, submit your details, write your message or choose from the available pre-approved templates and hit send.

Over time, MSG91 has added multiple features like analytics, regional language SMS, URL shortener and more to make SMS communication stronger and efficient for our customers

Having a robust communication system that never fails, especially when you are sending important updates like Transactional Alerts or OTP, is the main concern for businesses.

Who are your customers? And why they do need your product?

Pushpendra: MSG91 is needed for any and every kind of business that wants to communicate with its customers on a real-time basis. SMS as a communication channel is 27 years old today but is as relevant as it was years ago. It is invariably one of the most powerful mediums of communication that ensures prompt delivery and high open rates. Look at all e-commerce businesses, mobile wallets, banking institutions, schools, colleges and apps where you register and require OTP.

We get instant SMS alerts for any transactions we do. These are all possible through an SMS service provider like MSG91.

With whom does your product compete in the market? How is it different or unique from others?

Pushpendra: There are many providers of A2P communication that exist in the market today, catering to the same type of audience as MSG91. However, the reason that some of the Biggest brands in common industries trust us is for our reliable communications delivery.

We guarantee OTP SMS delivery since we use an altogether different route for sending these type of important SMS. We even cover the cost of retrying an OTP if the first attempt fails (99% it doesn’t) and we attempt retry through Voice, which has a higher click-through rate. We even have multiple provider tie-ups so there’s less chance of failure and a higher chance of delivery.

We even have a robust tech infrastructure to handle any downtimes and not let our customers suffer.

Who are your product users? What are the different use cases of the product?

Pushpendra: A typical user is somebody who wants to send out a communication to a set of users. Stakeholders for us differ industry to industry. For example in a typical software company, the user is an IT admin or a Product manager or even a Developer who would want to integrate with our API or Panel to allow sending SMS to software users.

In a non-tech business environment, it ranges from Business owners to Marketers to administrators, depending on who is responsible to send out the internal/ external communication for any specified business process. We literally speak to a variety of users on an everyday basis.

Any winning case studies you would like to highlight?

Pushpendra: We have some of the handsome Brands in varied industries including Travel, hospitality, education, e-commerce and more trusting us with their communication delivery.

We handle end-to-end SMS communication for the Travel giant – Ixigo where they send OTP for app activation, booking updates, booking confirmations, verification codes, updates about rewards points, refund details and many other offers and sale updates of booking to potential customers via SMS.

We also handle all the SMS alerts for the popular restaurant chain – Barbeque Nation where they send reservation confirmation SMS, reservation cancellation SMS and notifications regarding all the ongoing offers and updates through robust MSG91 system.

Policy Bazaar is another remarkable business that sends offer updates for a variety of their services using MSG91 communication system.

A number of subsidiaries of Mahindra group use MSG91 to establish and maintain secure communication with Customers.Smart Shift – a logistics service unit of the Mahindra Group uses MSG91’s SMS and OTP services to verify and enable their operations reliable and seamless.The milk retailing unit of the Mahindra Agri, Saboro conveys important information like offers and updates for building a strong customer relationship with their customers using MSG91 bulk messaging services.Car Chat – the customer support services unit of the Mahindra and Mahindra Automotive Division sends regular updates to its customers for every event related to their car using MSG91 services.

How does your product work?

Pushpendra: Check out the videos below to see how it works.

What have been your top product or growth challenges lately? And how are you managing that?

Pushpendra: Keeping SMS relevant as a communication channel in this digital world is something we’re constantly trying to achieve. Being an enterprise A2P communications provider, it is also highly essential for us to keep our system scalable and achieve higher levels of delivery rates. We’re constantly working towards ensuring better delivery and for that ensuring a robust infrastructure.

We’re deploying the latest of technology and resources. We’re putting in extra hours to offer excellent support and we’re constantly adding new features and offerings that make sending SMS easy and efficient for our customers.

What’s ahead on your Product Roadmap?

Pushpendra: Communication is getting more and more digital and in this digital era, keeping SMS alive sometimes looks challenging. But we have nothing to worry as it is still the most prominent and reliable medium of communication when it comes to sending important alerts to customers especially in the retail, e-commerce, education, banking and many other sectors.

We are coming up with various new features to keep up with the changing business scenarios. Rich Communication Services is one such thing that seem to be changing the entire game of SMS communication as it will change the typical SMS to a Rich Multimedia message to be sent through a provider. We’ve also recently launched an app to send SMS in customer’s regional/native language, where our system automatically detects a given number’s territory/country and converts the message in the destination’s local language.

We are set to invade the global communications space. We still are present in many parts of the world, but our efforts and customer base are highly established in India. MSG91 is looking towards capturing the omnichannel space. For now, we only have transactional Email & Voice services, but looking at the changing customer needs and market scenarios, we are soon planning to bring all the communication services (SMS, Email & Voice) under one umbrella.

The Man behind the product

Currently, the CEO and Co-founder of Walkover – the parent company behind MSG91, Pushpendra is an IMT, Dubai pass-out.

With years of experience in tech & ideation, Pushpendra has founded various startups ranging from Viasocket, KISS.io, Bingage, Muneem and so on.

With MSG91, his efforts are currently focused towards internationalizing and adding multiple communication channels to the Setup.