m3m.in - Email to SMS service in India

I am happy to see one innovative service that has recently launched in India. It is an Email to SMS service available at m3m.in.

This service:
* Forwards your emails as SMS to your phone
* Allows you to "Reply", "Reply All" using SMS
* Provides a fast loading HTML interface that can accessed using your phone's browser (if you have GPRS enabled).

For a long time, to access email on one's phone, there were two main options.

1. One needed to buy an expensive (and fragile) PDA phone and pay for a GPRS account to download emails. Downloading emails is also a slow and expensive (due to GPRS data transfer) operation.

2. For a smoother and faster experience, one could sign up for Blackberry service. It provides Push Email service using their proprietary technology. Emails don't have to be explicitly downloaded. They are automatically pushed to the Blackberry device and user can read them without the in-between wait for the emails to download. The downside is that the Blackberry devices are also on the expensive side. The biggest drawback is the cost of the Blackberry data plan which is approximately Rs 1000 per month.

Many people could not access email on phone as they could not afford the above phones and the cost of a GPRS account/ Blackberry service to regularly download/send emails.

There also exists a category of people that will like to receive certain emails (say, from customers) but want to avoid receiving "all" emails (as they do not like an always-connected lifestyle). Or, because they did not feel the value-cost proposition of Blackberry-like services was worth it.

Now, due to this new service, both can access their emails on their regular phones. Great to see such innovation happening out of India.

I spent today afternoon trying out this service and it has been very professionally implemented. And, for now, it seems to be free for individuals.