Mobile messaging firm Infobip opens Dhaka office

Short message services, particularly those carrying information on financial transactions, are not secure enough in Bangladesh, said ATM Mahbubul Alam, chairman of Wintel Ltd, the country's first mobile content provider.

“Sometimes the recipients don't receive SMS on time,” he said. “There are delays for hours. SMSs also end up with wrong recipients.”

To plug the security gap, Dhaka-based Wintel has partnered with Infobip, one of the leading cloud-based mobile messaging platforms in the world.

The London-based company has started offering secured SMS services, especially on financial transactions.

Infobip opened its Dhaka office yesterday as a part of its plan to expand its footprint in Bangladesh and provide dynamic mobile services in the country.

Infobip has signed agreements with mobile phone operator Banglalink, private landline operator RanksTel and several banks.

“It will be our responsibility to protect the accountholders of banks from manipulated SMS. We are already providing the service to some banks,” Matija Razem, vice-president for business development at Infobip. Infobip takes only a few seconds to send an SMS to the customers and it will never be late, he said. “Our system is capable of managing millions of SMSs within a few seconds.” Infobip started its operations in the Asia Pacific in 2010. Now it works with more than 800 telecom service providers around the globe.

It has offices in 44 countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, China, Japan and India.

Bangladesh is the ninth largest telecom market in the world and it is growing very fast. So it is necessary to ensure security for telecom and financial services, Razem said.

Currently, there are more than 12 crore active mobile phone subscribers in the country.  The current market size of mobile text is more than Tk 1,500 crore a year, with annual growth of 10-20 percent in terms of revenue in Bangladesh. Infobip said it has some other services, including mobile payment services.

Users of Infobip can purchase games and mobile applications from global platforms through their mobile phones, said Faisal Alim, managing director of Wintel.

Alim said the opening of the Dhaka office of Infobip is a turning point for the telecom sector.

The office will mainly be staffed by local sales and account managers as well as specialised support and integration engineers to power operators' partnership, he said.

The company also plans to establish a data centre in Bangladesh within a short period of time, said Roberto Kutic, chief operations officer at Infobip.