Indus OS and FreeCharge partner to introduce OS integrated innovation

Indus OS and FreeCharge partner to introduce OS integrated innovation to revolutionize the pre-paid recharge industry

• World’s first OS-level, call charges and balance analytics inbuilt in the phone dialer
• ‘Indus Dialer ’ will enable One-Touch recharge through FreeCharge to empower users in a cashless economy

Two of India’s foremost innovative technology leaders – Indus OS, the indigenous Made for India OS; the World’s First Regional Operating System, and FreeCharge, India’s leading digital payments platform – unveiled Recharge 2.0, a game-changing product integrated within the smartphone dialer interface today. Recharge 2.0 on the Indus Dialer will, for the first time ever, empower and allow for a seamless and simplified recharge experience for Indian smartphone users powered through FreeCharge.

As per various industry estimates, it is well acknowledged that 95% of India’s mobile subscriber base comprises pre-paid connections. While a majority of prepaid users prefer data plans that have a fixed monthly charge for limited amount of data usage, an oft neglected fact is that they do not have a clear idea of how their money is getting spent.

Recharge 2.0 aims to bridge this gap and introduce features that provide comprehensive analysis on usage patterns alongside real-time updates to offer more control in the hands of pre-paid users. Powered by an OS-level integration pioneered by Indus OS, Recharge 2.0 encourages smart usage of prepaid balance along with a superior and intuitive mobile recharge experience powered by FreeCharge.

The OS-integrated payment innovation on Indus Dialer is seamless and accessible in the most natural interface, the phone dialer – moving beyond the app and web interfaces. The new Indus Dialer allows users one-touch access on the phone dialer to recharge through FreeCharge. It also allows instant information of current balance on the main dialer screen. The user can also analyse historical balance and compare daily, weekly and monthly balance usage across Talktime, Data and SMS. The user can set thresholds to receive low balance alerts. Additionally, expense of every call can be tracked within the call log and money spent on each contact can also be analysed, giving complete and accurate information to the user.

Rakesh Deshmukh, CEO & Co-Founder, Indus OS, “Contextual integration of brands and products across tech platforms is the future. This is inevitable in an economy such as ours, where we are just starting to scrape the surface of OS-integrated Brands (OSIB) to address true consumer needs. So, language integration in AI based services, map integration with location based services, payment integration with utility based services, video/audio integration with communication based services, security integration with government offered services, are amongst many such possibilities that will be explored. We have been working towards this and developed success cases, for instance, the Indus Reader (Text-to-Speech feature) developed in collaboration with the Ministry of Electronics and IT.”

He further added, “We are proud to introduce the OS-integrated Freecharge product, which will revolutionize the way Indian pre-paid users recharge their SIMs. It’s two key value propositions are; one-touch recharge payments, and tools allowing complete information on spends across talktime, SMS and data. Our aim is to empower the pre-paid user with accurate information aiding smart decision making. This first-in-the-world experience is expected to positively impact the consumer engagement and consumption rates.”

Govind Rajan, CEO, Freecharge, said, “We are extremely pleased to launch contextual payments by way of Recharge 2.0 – a one touch recharging and balance analytics product for the users of Indus OS, which is a first of its kind product launched by anyone in the world. FreeCharge has always taken immense pride in its simple and intuitive user experience. Contextual payments takes this a step forward with the one touch recharge interface that comes with Recharge 2.0. At present, we have collaborated for recharge payments being powered through FreeCharge on Indus OS but soon we plan to expand the scope to all kind of payment services like DTH recharges, electricity bill payments, merchant payments in both the online and offline space. Additionally, the FreeCharge experience will now be available in 12 major regional languages with Indus OS which will provide us a chance to serve the regional smartphone users as well.”

Recharge 2.0 will be exclusively accessible to the existing 6 million plus Indus OS user base and new users of Indus OS powered-devices. Indus OS is currently the #2 mobile OS in India, with a 7.6% market share. By catering to Indus OS’ user base via the OS-Integrated Brands, FreeCharge expects to scale up its recharge transactions and volumes by nearly 20%. FreeCharge currently sees a major chunk of its transaction coming through the recharge’s category.

In the face of the latest developments in the payment infrastructure and the burgeoning cashless economy of India, Indus OS and FreeCharge have taken a proactive effort to encourage refined payment habits and patterns.

Secondary data indicates that a whopping 95% of mobile users are prepaid. And, a sizeable amount of 30% users are making mobile recharge by M-payments. On the hardware front, only 40% smartphones in the market are capable of online recharge. This payment innovation in the OS-level will be the easiest and the most contextual payment option in this given scenario. Both companies are syndicated on the strategy, to develop a specialized offering rather than a one-size-fits-all. FreeCharge which already witnesses 90% of its transactions coming through the App, will further broaden its M-payment base by serving more than 6 million customers of Indus OS.

Indus OS’ vision to empower the next 100 million Indians with an operating system of their choice, requires an ecosystem rich in simple, localized and intuitive features. For this, the company is consistently partnering closely with various stakeholders for OS-level Brands of features that are seamless and contextual in nature.