Indian entrepreneur, founder of Innoz, creator of the "offline search engine" and WIRED 2013 speaker Deepak Ravindran is giving away the source code for the offline net, with telecoms providers in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Nigeria and Kenya onboard and ready.

When Deepak Ravindran was trying to work out the answer to a question one day, but found himself stuck with what he calls "a dumb phone", the computer science graduate quickly realised there was a gaping social problem that needed a solution.

When he launched SMSGyan three years later, 700 million mobile


phone users in India were not online -- within two years, his service made sure 120 million of them were. The system allows users to text any question, before the SMSGyan algorithm crawls the internet for answers -- Ravindran's company Innoz partnered with Wikipedia, Bing and Wolfram Alpha. It could be used to send Gmail emails, to post on Facebook or even tweet.

The product boomed in a few short years following partnerships with every telecommunications provider in India, and it soon came preloaded on devices. "We were profitable from day one," Ravindran tells WIRED.co.uk. "We monetised it through cellular subscription, one rupee per query, and developed a subscriptions model of 30 rupees a month." Ravindran believed, at the time, they had "cracked the model".

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Then came Android. "India is one of the largest consumer markets, and they like multipurpose items, whether it's a phone that doubles up as a torch or a FM radio; the Indian consumer is always looking for value."

When low-end Android phones hit the market, smartphone penetration skyrocketed. In September of this year, India was named the fourth largest smartphone market, with 111 million connected devices.


No matter what, this should exist and should run Deepak Ravindran, Innoz

Accepting that the market had moved on, but knowing he and his team had built a product worth salvaging, Ravindran looked to other markets. "At launch, other countries had been calling us to get this, especially in Africa and southeast Asia -- there they did not have as much internet usage as in India or as many smartphone users."

As a result of this demand, WIRED.co.uk can exclusively reveal that Ravindran has this week decided to give away the source code for free via the offlineinternet.org. "The time is right for us to take the bold action of making our offline internet service free -- and we are going even further by committing to post the source code for free," Ravindran said. "By giving away the source code, we can ignite the creative energies of the entire developer community and fuel unprecedented levels of innovation in the SMS market. Customers can benefit from world-class technology advancements, the development community gains access to a whole new market opportunity and Innoz core businesses benefit from licensing it with telecom operators."

The company has already sold the licenses to these operators, with Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Nigeria and Kenya all interested.

The software itself has already been passed to two startups, mobile software development firm Sari Software in the Philippines, and one owned (but not yet incorporated) by entrepreneur Mo Mughal. Explaining the move, Ravindran said: "My quest as an entrepreneur was to think


'what is the exit strategy for investors'."

Acquisitions for offline companies were few and far between, he said, "but we didn't want to shut it down." The team had spent five years on the product -- <a style="background-color: transparent;" href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gyan.brownie&hl=en_GB"> there's even an app</a> for the offline search function -- and knew it was in demand elsewhere in the world. "No matter what, this should exist and should run," Ravindran said. "Ignoring the fact that this will not make money. I discussed inside the team, and the main reason for doing it was quite simple: during the days of Netscape, they took it open source when it was decided not to go further. That's how Mozilla was formed, which launched Firefox, which is one of the best open source companies around the world. "I feel, and this is an entrepreneur's bet on a long run, it's only a matter of time before we can prove whether this can fly or not fly."

Ravindran, who recently launched a "Whatsapp for business" in India called Lookup, understands that, as with any offline business, the threat of change is looming. Soon, every one of us will be online, with initiatives like Google's Project Loon and Facebook's internet.org on the horizon. However, Ravindran does not see why any country with mobile penetration should wait to get online. His tool can get them there, now.