Sabeer Bhatia's JaxtrSMS to allow free SMSes

MUMBAI: Jaxtr Inc, founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Yogesh Patel, on Wednesday launched JaxtrSMS, a cross-platform open texting application to send SMSes to anyone in the world for free. "We have developed this application that runs on all mobile applications in the world, including iPhones, Androids, Blackberrys, J2MEs, where one can send unlimited free text messages from his phone to any mobile phone in the world," Jaxtr Inc CEO and co-founder and co-founder of Hotmail Sabeer Bhatia told reporters here. At present it is very expensive for sending international SMSes costing Rs 5 per message, he said. JaxtrSMS, which was developed in the country, is expecting at least 100 million subscriber base globally, he added. "We witnessed tremendous response to this application during the soft launch where users across 197 countries downloaded it in a few weeks and expect 100 million subscribers by end of next year," Bhatia said. The company will generate revenue through advertisements and premium services like archiving texts, multimedia, video etc, which will be available by mid next year, he said. The premium services will be available for the subscribers at a very nominal cost, Bhatt said. "We are talking with advertisers," he said. The US-based company is looking at USD 10-15 million investment in JaxtrSMS in another couple of months. "We are in talks with a few investors and are looking at investing USD 10-15 million in a couple of months time," he added. Bhatia said this application would be in accordance with the regulatory provisions of the country. Globally, there are 4.2 billion texters worldwide and it is expected to reach 12 trillion by 2015.