Bharti Airtel in association with  Affle has introduced search through SMS service that will allow Airtel customers to Search – Airtel Live, Internet, Local search, Jobs and Property listings, from their SMS screen. The companies also hope that the SMS-based search service would open up a huge revenue model driven around delivering contextual advertising on the search results.

According to Airtel, the Short Message and Search 2.0 (SMS2.0) application is available to users for free and to download SMS2.0, the Airtel customers simply need to send ‘SMS2’ to 543210. There is no charge for downloading and for subsequent content delivery on this platform; the SMS charges remain unchanged and according to the existing mobile plan.

Sanjay Gupta, chief marketing officer, Bharti Airtel, has said, “The uptake of the SMS2.0 has been very encouraging and we are embarking to take this platform to a different level – introducing search through SMS. This new upgrade service will thus allow Airtel users to Search – Airtel Live, Internet, Local search, Jobs and Property listings, from their SMS screen.”

Anuj Khanna, CEO, Affle, has said, “India is a very exciting mobile market and in Airtel we have found a great partner to take our services to users. We had tremendous success with the SMS2.0 service, and with the launch of Search, we feel that the value proposition to the user is even more exciting.”