Today, I received the wedding invitation of one of my colleagues, over e-mail. The e-mail message had a wedding invite attached to it that sparked a series of thoughts….
‘What if there was a solution that could help appize the wedding invitation to a mobile application’. The application download URL with customized text/audio/video message can then be readily distributed to friends and relatives over SMS/MMS.
The recipient upon opening the mobile wedding invitation sees the wedding invite or an audio invite by the would be bride/groom, interactive maps that provide direction and route guidance to the venue, save the date in the calendar, schedule congratulatory SMS to be sent on the D-day and subsequent anniversaries, guest book which allows the recipient to confirm their presence and itinerary for the wedding, etc. This is an illustrative feature list, I am sure the readers of this post will have many more creative inputs.
This solution is not entirely new. There are online portals (http://www.didmo.com) which help lay users create mobile applications without any knowledge of programming, however a free version is usually ad supported and we don’t want ads in our wedding invitation! The fact that a free version is an ad supported model, the idea does not lend to consumer (B2C) model (however it does if you are willing to shell out $’s) as a pure play business, especially if the mobile application in question is a wedding invitation!
In Indian context I see it as a business to business (B2B) model, as a services business, wherein the card print shop provides an option of creating a mobile wedding invitation to the buyer. If the buyer wants, the card print shop logs on to the online terminal application provided by the appizer to create a mobile wedding invite. Appizer charges a fixed amount to the card print shop, which in turn charges monies to the buyer. Since the same card print shop is also associated with the creative design/layout/physical print, of the wedding invite, it helps the card print shop to extend its bouquet of services and the buyer gets both physical print and mobile solution under one roof.
In India and elsewhere in the world, match making also happens by volunteering aunts/uncles/friends/neighbors (social matrimony – check out http://www.youpid.in or the MatrimonyMaster facebook application). The Appizer can extend the B2B model to marriage bureaus/brick’n’mortar presence of online matrimonial portals, for the creation of mobile bio-data’s for people who register with them. The parents of would be bride/groom can then share the mobile bio data’s of their son/daughter to social acquaintances thus spreading the viral! Apart from text the mobile bio data’s can have elements of graphics and video.
Print media power houses that have presence in the space of internet and mobile applications are ideally suited to offer the buyers of print matrimonial classified space an option to create mobile bio data’s and put the download URL in the print classified ad.
Internet penetration and the fact that India has over 10 million marriages annually, has positively impacted the business of online matrimony portals, it’s time to take it to the next frontier of mobile devices.
As always, I will request the readers of this post if you have time, please drop a line.
Interesting ideas Himanshu. Thanks for mentioning Youpid.in (http://www.youpid.in)!
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