Kaplan, who is currently looking for a strategic investor, talks about his latest product launch MFish, a mobile application and kit that provides a direct and unlimited data plan – including weather forecasts as well as data on fish prices andfish locations – to fishermen.
The product was launched at the 2014 Ocean Conference with the support of the US State Department (Office of Global Partnerships) and the GSM Association.
Indonesia is among the world’s top five countries with the highest mobile internet penetration after India and China, according to an Ericsson 2014 mobility report.
However, Asia-Pacific smartphone penetration is highest in Hong Kong and Singapore at 87%, followed by Malaysia (80%), Australia (75%) and China (71%).
Penetration in developing Asia-Pacific markets, while trailing more developed markets in the region, is gaining traction. Thailand’s smartphone penetration is at 49% followed by Indonesia (23%), India (18%) and the Philippines (15%), according to Nielson.
Indonesia mobile communications operator PT XLAxiata is interested in bringing a digital experience to people in areas with low smartphone penetration – the sea.
According to various sources, Indonesia’s maritime production sector hit only 5.06 million tons in 2011 with a total value of around US$14.1bn (Jakarta Post).
XL saw a win-win situation. It would reach a new untapped customer market (many of these fishermen could not afford online data packages) and MFishTone’s mobile application would help fishermen net more fish, which is expected to boost national fish production.
Kaplan, head of Tone, a self-funded mobile communications company with a predominately non-US focus, developed the application to bring continuous local fishery data with unlimited access to fishermen in a cost-effective way.
The waterproof “activation kit”, Kaplan explains, includes a bag, a lower end smartphone and a data plan.
“We will then provide that package to government contractors to engage with fisheries and provide them with management tools. By bringing the data to the fishermen directly, we helped them save about half on their basic monthly mobile communications bill. When you look at the ICT price bucket in some countries, these costs can reach to about 15% of fisherman’s monthly income.”
Many times a large percentage of a monthly data plan will be consumed by online advertising without users knowing it, Kaplan explains. He believes that the next big thing to entice new customers to carriers is providing content that is compelling.
“When it comes to data abuse, carriers do not win. That is why we are working with carriers so that they can deliver apps that offer a great user experience, along with cost savings, that on top of all that have a social benefit impact,” says Kaplan.
And the whole “social benefit” is not a PR stunt, he says.
If you provide a social benefit it should actually benefit users by controlling their costs and deliver data that they can use.
And with Tone’s equity partnership with the GSMA, which represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, MFish could potentially reach over 800 carriers in 250 countries. The scalability, Kaplan says, is immense.
Kaplan has plans to launch similar platforms with social benefits within the agriculture, energy and healthcare sectors, to name a few. The company will be gathering on-the-ground data from the NGOs working with target app users to develop the products to then co-launch with mobile carriers.
The MFish kit will be first launched in Indonesia, then the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Local NGOs and activation kit trainers will be on the ground in launch areas.
“The smartphone is a learning curve and an evolutionary process for many of the fishermen in Lombok since many have not used or owned one until now. And once they can use these online tools they can be change agents in their own industry,” says Kaplan.
XL has distributed Android smartphones with the MFish application to 18,056 fishermen in the Lombok area, West Nusa Tenggara, where XL has a 93% share of the subscriber base (Jakarta Post).
The carrier aims to introduce MFish to around 32,000 more fishermen from other areas, including Karimunjawa, Demak,Tegal and Kendari by the end of 2015. Then the larger Jakarta market will be marketed.
Kaplan and his team are currently fundraising for an undisclosed amount of funding. They are solely interested in strategic and corporate investors. He was in discussions with two telecommunications companies and one content company when we spoke in February.
During his career Kaplan has led the creation, production and commercialisation of platforms in mobile commerce (PayPal Text2Buy), mobile donation (Text2Give), and mobile sampling (ShopText). Text 2 Buy and Text2Give are now fully merged into the overall PayPal Mobile product.