Minhaz Lokhandwala and the case for one less app

A phone can become crowded without getting any larger. Each business would like a little space inside it: an icon, a login, a notification, a customer who remembers a password. Minhaz Lokhandwala’s proposition begins with a smaller request. The phone has an inbox already. Perhaps the next interaction can start there.

Lokhandwala is the Singapore-based founder and CEO of Novosol, whose moLotus platform delivers personalized mobile video and other rich media through telecom partnerships. The company describes a service that works without an app download or a subscriber data plan. That delivery choice is the distinguishing feature of his business. An advertiser supplies a message; a network helps it arrive; the customer gets a way to respond.

It is an approach with a history. Before the international partnerships and the funding announcements, Lokhandwala was talking about a mobile magazine full of movies, sport and small diversions. Before that, he worked in software and telecom. Across those stages, the same practical question keeps coming into view: what can an existing channel do if you give it a different job?

A software boss, before the mobile magazine

His education crossed science and business. His published biography lists a bachelor’s degree in physics and an MBA in Marketing and Finance from Rice University, completed in 1987. It also records project management training at IIM Ahmedabad and a diploma in software development and architecture. His earlier career included roles at McKinsey, PBS and Hewlett Packard. These are useful coordinates for a founder whose later product connects technical delivery with a commercial proposition.

An old colleague’s recollection gives that career a more human scale. Shabbir Mohammed Haidermota remembers his first job at Pyramid Business Systems, working for Lokhandwala in 1991. The memory pairs a pleasant boss with enthusiasm for exploring software products. It is a modest anecdote, and a revealing one. Long before the moLotus pitch, someone working beside him remembered the appetite to make something new.

Novosol traces its underlying ideas to his early-2000s work on telecom projects in Asia and Latin America, including 3G networks and mobile content solutions. The setting matters. Building for a network involves more than deciding what a screen should look like. A service has to reach people through the equipment, systems and commercial relationships already in place. His later operator partnerships make sense against that background.

The venture’s beginnings have two useful dates. A 2015 biography says he began Novosol in 2006. The Singapore company’s incorporation is listed as April 2007. An idea, a business and a registered company do not always enter the world on the same day. By the time he was explaining Funpack publicly, the venture had acquired a rather jaunty publishing personality.

A little fun, with the machinery underneath

Funpack was an advertising-supported multimedia mobile magazine. Movie trailers and sports updates offered a reason to open the message. Lokhandwala cited Red Chillies’ promotion of Happy New Year as an example of its use in India. The service’s tagline, “Fun on the Run,” had the breezy confidence of a product hoping to win a smile before making a sale.

The mechanics were less breezy. In his 2015 account, Funpack was free to subscribers and permission-based, with an SMS opt-out. Advertisers could examine delivery, viewing and response reports backed by telecom logs. The product combined the manners of a small entertainment publication with the accounting of a campaign tool. Even a movie promotion eventually needs somebody to check the figures.

“Subscribers can stop the service anytime with an SMS.”

Minhaz Lokhandwala · Funpack interview, 2015

That combination is the interesting part of the episode. Entertainment gave the message a reason to be welcomed. Distribution gave it somewhere to go. Reporting gave the advertiser a way to examine what happened after it arrived. Seen this way, Funpack supplies an early outline of the broader customer interaction business that Novosol would promote through moLotus.

There is also a small, useful distinction between sending a message and making it worth receiving. A delivery system can solve the first problem. Content and relevance still have to solve the second. Lokhandwala’s magazine put both problems inside one product. The recipient’s side of the transaction had a place in the design, alongside the advertiser’s desire for a measurable response.

The operator gets a part

With moLotus, the business widens from mobile publishing into video advertising and customer interaction. Novosol’s material describes personalized messages that can include pictures, text and response options. The applications extend beyond promoting a release: an offer, a reminder or a customer follow-up can use the same general delivery channel. The inbox becomes a place to conduct a piece of business.

The key relationship is with the operator. In March 2021, Indosat Ooredoo and Novosol announced iAds-MGram, powered by moLotus, for Indonesian advertisers. Their stated division of work was concrete. Indosat would bring its business sales force, ecosystem and existing clients. Novosol would contribute the platform, technical support, business know-how and marketing material. Each side had a job beyond appearing in the announcement.

The announced service included online campaign management and analytics, giving advertisers tools to review responses, leads and other measures. For Lokhandwala’s business, that completes an important loop. Delivering video is one component. Giving a business a way to organize a campaign and see the resulting interactions makes the delivery useful in an everyday marketing operation.

His company’s published campaign galleries make the variety visible. The telecom showcase includes an Airtel data offer, a Vodafone-Idea Eros Now campaign and a TM rewards invitation. The Indonesian gallery includes Amazon Prime, Suzuki and Viu promotions. These are examples of messages carried through the platform, rather than a single content genre. A mobile magazine’s trailer and a membership invitation can share a channel while asking very different things of the person opening them.

The language changes, too. The galleries label campaigns in Bahasa Indonesia, Malay, Hindi and English. International reach becomes concrete at that level: somebody has to read the offer and understand what to do next. For a company selling customer interaction, the last few words on the screen are as much a part of the product as the system delivering them.

Another market, another relationship

In June 2022, moLotus announced a strategic alliance with Saudi Excellence Company, based in Riyadh. The partnership targeted telecom, banking and esports applications in Saudi Arabia. It extended the business’s geographic ambitions through another local relationship. The route into a market once again involved a partner with its own commercial presence.

The announcement presented the alliance as a way to develop customer interaction and new revenue opportunities. Its large financial ambition was a projection. The observable milestone was the partnership itself. That distinction keeps the story in proportion: an agreement opens a door, and the work of operating in the new market follows.

The Saudi chapter also shows the flexibility of the underlying proposition. A product built around mobile messages can be proposed for several industries. Yet every new application brings a different customer relationship and a different desired response. The promise of a shared platform rests on accommodating those differences, rather than assuming that one campaign will serve everyone.

Capital for the next set of decisions

The financing history supplies another pair of milestones. In 2019, Novosol announced that its total funding raised had reached $7 million. In February 2024, a $10 million Series B was reported, backed by family offices in Singapore and the United Kingdom. The figures describe financing at different points. They are useful markers of the company’s development, without standing in for sales or profit.

The stated uses of the later round included entering additional markets and developing moLotus. The accompanying product description added RCS capabilities and AI-driven avatars and advertising creative to the discussion. Those additions place newer formats around the older distribution question. What changes is the kind of message a business can construct; the destination remains the customer’s phone.

Lokhandwala’s public interests have moved with that conversation. His LinkedIn writing has covered mobile engagement, e-commerce and, in September 2023, Microsoft Copilot. The subjects range beyond a single messaging format. His company’s own team page offers a more compact observation: it lists his name under both Founder & CEO and Engineering. The two entries put the commercial and technical sides of the venture next to each other.

For all the international plans, the story still returns to an ordinary object. A customer is holding a phone. A business has something to communicate. Between them sit a network, a message, permission and a possible reply. Lokhandwala has spent successive chapters of his career working on that interval. The appeal of his proposition is easy to understand: a useful interaction should ask as little preliminary work of the recipient as possible. One less app is a sensible place to start.