Bangalore based Ziva Software, a mobile search start-up, incubated at IIM Bangalore, has announced the launch of Zook Alerts. Zook is India’s first Mobile Fetch Engine that gets exact answers to ANY query, across the whole of India. The service can be accessed via mobile browsers (www.zook.in) or just by sending a SMS to 5757 5665.

Zook Alerts enables users to create custom alerts for themselves depending on their specific interest(s). For example, a user may choose to receive updates only for English movies playing at PVR @ Forum Mall in Bangalore – rather than receive a generic alert with different movies across the city. This becomes even more important when the user wants to follow only Rock concerts in his/her city without being forced to get SMSes about all types of events (including, say, classical music concerts).

Zook Alerts are available for a number of different categories – deals/coupons, movie show times, events, weather, traffic updates, cricket news/scores, etc.

This service is absolutely FREE for users. To set alerts, users can visit www.zook.in to find and set the desired alerts (by searching for “alerts ” where category can be deals, movies, etc.). This can also be done by sending an SMS with a message such as “alerts movies and/or ”. For instance, “alerts movies PVR Bangalore” helps you find and set automatic updates only for show times in that theatre.

In addition, Zook Alert users can always access Zook to find exactly what they are looking for – say, by searching for “nokia deals bangalore” on Zook, and then using the “Subscribe to Deals Alerts” action to get SMS updates whenever similar deals are available.

Zook is a free service; however, users will have to pay the usual operator-specific premium SMS and data/access charges for using WAP and sending SMSes.

Dr. Ajay Sethi, Founder and CEO, Ziva Software, said “Zook has, for the first time, introduced a personalized alerts service that gives mobile users the choice and flexibility to decide what they want to follow. This dramatically improves the usefulness and effectiveness of mobile alerts.”

Zook search service has being growing rapidly over the last several months – it handled more than 3 million page hits. Zook allows users to search for any information that is available on the web. Based on the past usage, certain categories of searches are more popular; these include mobile content (wallpapers, ringtones, ringback tones, mobile games, etc.), entertainment-oriented searches (jokes, images, movie listings, restaurants, etc) and, interestingly, queries related to social mobility (travel, colleges, exam schedules/results, etc.).

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About Zook and Ziva Software

Zook allows users to access information available across the whole web (and more) – with or without data connectivity. Zook has the largest searchable index of mobile downloads (ringtones, wallpapers, ringback tones, picture messages, themes, etc.). The index also includes exact answers about local businesses, ATMs, restaurants, showtimes, weather information, bus routes and flight information, traffic status, etc., across India. Zook can also be used to access wikipedia, dictionary, etc. In short, just about ANY question/query that a user thinks needs answering on the phone.

Zook is Ziva Software's flagship product. Ziva Software represents the new generation of Indian product companies that are using the huge and rapidly growing Indian mobile market to build and fine-tune unique products. These products can then be launched in other parts of the world. Ziva Software’s goal is to enable users to get access to the depth and breadth of information available on the world-wide web and within various social communities just by sending a SMS!

About Founder

Dr. Ajay Sethi, CEO

1.Prior to starting Ziva Software in 2005, Dr. Sethi was the Director of Product Development at Oracle. He has led teams in Business Intelligence and Data warehousing, Languages and Object Relational Technologies, R&D, etc. at Oracle. He spent 8 years with Oracle – 4 years at Redwood Shores, California (Oracle HQ) and 4 years at Bangalore.

2.Education: UC Berkeley (Finance certificate), Rice University (Ph.D. in Parallel Languages/Compliers), IIT Bombay (Computer Science).

3.Dr. Sethi has authored several papers and patent applications.