Ecrio's Revolutionary Cell Phone Applications Could Change How America Shops

By: Elizabeth SvobodaFri May 9, 2008 at 5:06 PM

Millions use Nagesh Challa's gadgetry -- in Japan. Now he wants to change how Americans shop.

Nagesh Challa | photograph by Suzy Polling

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When Challa clicks an icon in the email, Loper's just-recorded message plays through his computer speakers. From here, Challa has several options: He can reply via email, which gets sent to the recipient's phone as a text message; record a voice-message reply using the computer or his phone; or have a text-based phone-to-phone or computer-to-phone dialogue in real time, Instant Messenger -- style. "It's fixed and mobile convergence," Challa explains. "Multimedia messaging isn't new by itself, but the flexibility of receiving a message any place is what's interesting about this platform." He sees the Push-to-X platform as akin to the primitive Internet of the early 1990s -- a forward-looking framework on which more specialized structures will eventually be erected. "I can add video IP -- I can say, 'Hang on, let me show you something,' and there'll be a little 30-second video that'll come directly to your phone. I can add advertising. I can add coupons. I can add commerce. That's the uniqueness."

The next Ecrio product planned in this line -- and the first slated for release in the United States -- is MoBeam, a program that uses the LEDs on cell phones to create patterns that mimic bar-code sequences. For years, developers have been trying to display scannable bar codes on cell-phone screens -- unsuccessfully; light reflecting off the screens interferes with the scanners' detection systems. "Then I thought, What if we get out of the paradigm of trying to read the code off of the screen?" Challa says. "It's looking for light reflections, so why don't we just give it the light it's expecting?" The upshot: Instead of printing out online coupons, movie tickets, and boarding passes -- and toting around credit cards and gift cards -- consumers will soon be able to store bar codes in their phones. Visa found Challa's idea so revolutionary that it just announced plans to make MoBeam the centerpiece of its upcoming mobile-phone credit-card program.

While Challa's goal of opening new avenues for communication and commerce may be visionary, it's hardly unique; startups all over the world are clamoring to peddle mobile apps to industry giants. What secures Ecrio's place at the mobile vanguard is Challa's unusual willingness to cater to his clients and to truly understand not just their needs but their culture -- and not only by singing karaoke. "I've dealt with take-it-all-style negotiations with other U.S. companies," says Tetsuya Mori, who heads the technology venture-capital practice at Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. "Japanese companies feel refreshed when they deal with Nagesh. His style resonates here -- he knows how to make things win-win. I've heard people say, 'I can't say no to Nagesh. I want to find a way to come to terms with him.'" Several years ago, Challa also taught himself Japanese from scratch, listening to language CDs and practicing vocabulary in stolen moments between meetings. ("I didn't have the discipline to learn it formally," he says, in typical self-deprecating fashion, "so I picked it up along the way.")

While Challa works hard at lining up high-profile customers to continue fueling Ecrio's momentum, his true passion is unchanged: seizing seemingly out-there ideas and pursuing them to the hilt. "I've always wanted to do some kind of instant karaoke," he says, back in mad-scientist mode. "If you could take a mainstream song, somehow filter out the voices coming through, and then inject your own through a microphone, that would be so cool." Fanciful? Sure. But to Challa, pursuing business success is a lot like coaxing out unfamiliar Japanese syllables on the karaoke stage. The notes might be a little off-key at first, but when you finally get it right, it's a rush like you wouldn't believe.