Questions to Christopher DeGrace CEO One Pin

Can you describe ONEPINE ?

 OnePIN provides Social Address Book solutions to mobile operators that enable subscribers to transform an initial contact with a friend (typically a voice call or SMS) into a relationship by automatically enabling contact exchange information and friending to social networks. CallerXchange, OnePIN’s flagship product, is a person-to-person contact exchange service that connects people and enhances social networks by enabling subscribers to easily share and update contact information – all with a click of a button.  CallerXchange is currently being shipped to over 20 Million subscribers and has achieved significant market uptake. With headquarters in Boston and offices and customers around the world, OnePIN is setting the global standard for mobile social address book solutions. For more information, visit www.onepin.com .

What are your plans ?

Our CallerXchange service is currently being shipped to over 20 Million subscribers and has achieved a significant uptake of over 40% in a number of markets.  Our primary markets of focus include: Africa, Europe, India and Latin America.  We are currently engaged in commercial deployments and trials with a number of operators worldwide, including: Orange, America Movil (Claro), Cable & Wireless, T-Mobile, Vodafone, and Oger Telecom. 

What is your business model?

OnePIN sells its solutions to Mobile Operators.  The typical business model is for OnePIN to charge a transaction free (or revenue share) for each transaction.  This is a preferred model for mobile operators as there is not a large capital investment required to deploy the solution or a long budgeting process – especially in these difficult economic times.  With this “friction-less” business model and basic implementation requirements (no systems integration), mobile operators can deploy OnePIN solutions very rapidly and start generating revenue immediately.

Mobile operators make money with our services by enriching their subscribers’ phonebooks – the more contacts and the more information per contact, the more ARPU that is generated from subscribers.  Secondly, an enriched phonebook (stored on the SIM card or a Network Address Book) is the ultimate subscriber retention tool.  If subscribers store their life-long connections with one operator, and have the ability to easily make new connection and keep old connections up-to-date, they will be less likely to switch to another operator.

What do you think about the mobile ecosystem ?

We believe that Mobile Operators are in the prime position to create the ecosystem’s largest, and most compelling social graph.  This position is based on people’s dependence on the mobile phone (the most social device that people have) and the convenience and importance of communicating with life-long friends with one-click of a button.

Mobile subscribers consider the phonebook to be the most important application on the phone, however, mobile operators have failed to leverage the phonebook as a revenue generator and a retention tool.  As the Personal Information management (PIM) world is now converging with the Social Networking space, mobile operators have a limited opportunity to leverage their position to enrich and monetize the mobile phonebook.