Mobile Marketing Portal

MW meets up with the twenty eight year old Chief Technology Officer of mobile services enabler, iSentric.
By Kashminder Singh

When was iSentric set up?
iSentric was set up in 2003 when I teamed up with Aaron Lee. Both of us decided to venture into the mobile industry as we felt that it had great potential.

What made you decide that the mobile industry had great potential?
I was working with consultancy firm, Accenture and they assigned me to handle a few telco related projects. My involvement with the mobile industry convinced me that there was a bright future there and we decided to take the plunge.

What’s your role in iSentric?
I take care of the technology side and handle operations. Things are hectic now as this also involves our overseas operations. We have offices in KL and Singapore. My partner takes care of business development and marketing.

That sounds like long hours of work.
Correct. I spend a lot of time in the office. Luckily I live nearby. But then again I am not complaining. I think this is pretty typical of any start-up trying to establish itself. I love my job and if I am not mistaken, almost everyone work long hours these days.

What exactly is iSentric’s position in the mobile industry?
I would like to say that we are an end to end mobile services company but then again, that’s a pretty generic description and everyone says that anyway. iSentric concentrates on three areas which are Mobile Solutions, Prepaid Reloads and Interactive TV.

What’s Interactive TV?
That refers to the voting and comments type of things you can do these days on TV via SMS.

Tell us about some of the achievements of iSentric.
You can say that we are strong in the government and financial sector. Among the big things we have worked on are the Khidmat Negara SMS system and the general elections SMS system used by the Elections Commission. We are also the mobile technology enabler for all the major Chinese newspapers in Malaysia.

Where do you think mobile technology is heading towards?
That’s an easy one. It’s all about convergence. Devices are converging and we will also see data services merging.

What about 3G in Malaysia? What’s your take on that?
There are two directions it can take. There is the Scandinavian experience where despite it being a leading mobile technology region, SMS is still paramount. In the Japanese and Korean model, 3G data usage has been strong from day one. I am not certain but market reports do show that SMS will still be strong here for a few more years but it is anyone’s guess, really.

How about you personally?
I do use 3G for data services but mainly on my notebook with my phone as a modem. I just bought a Nokia E61 and I am also using 3G services with that too.