Elanso

Earlier this month, India surpassed US as the second largest mobile market (by subscriber count) in the world. With close to 280 million subscribers, it now has enough of a user base to become a breeding ground for a new class of applications that take in account local realities: lack of high speed networks, cheap phones and reliance on SMS.

Take Yulop, a Bangalore, India-based location-based start-up. Instead of waiting around for GPS data, the tiny start-up is launching its location based search service that uses triangulation technologies and offers consumers listings of find businesses (shops, restaurants and) based on geo-tagged data from its database. Yulop plans to offer service in six cities in addition to it current market of Bangalore.

By offering its downloadable app, Yulop seems to have beat a lot of its big competitors to the punch in what will be a very competitive market. Google, Microsoft and Nokia are chasing the same opportunity. Whether Yulop makes it to the big time remains to be seen, buts approach makes a lot of sense.

While in the Western Economies, the easy availability of mapping and local data makes its easier for companies to think about building LBS apps, Yulop is taking a more pragmatic approach: triangulation is the only option in the market. Similarly, having a properly tagged information database helps the tiny company offer up more accurate results in the local market. I think we will see more of this trend, where local companies adapt some of the “overseas” concepts to meet the needs of Indian wireless subscribers.