Financial Times

Election campaign SMS wins plaudits for Lankan IT firm
Involving the public to monitor the 2004 General Election, by way of short message service (SMS) has earned zMessenger (Pvt) Ltd a nomination for the World GSM Awards 2005, to be held in Cannes, France Tuesday.

zMessenger is a company specializing in mobile-based (SMS) marketing and research, and was the first company in Sri Lanka in this field.

zMessenger, together with the Peoples Alliance for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL) urged the public to report any cases of election violence and malpractices by sending an

SMS with no obligation to disclose their identities. There was an overwhelming response from the public with 9000 SMS reported by the vigilant public. 1100 cases of election violence were reported and some other reports included difficulties people had with casting their vote, cases of misuse of public media by politicians and so on. The first reported murder was also by way of.

SMS and it was a report of a murder that took place in Samanthurai. The reports were sent to the zMessenger server as well as the PAFFREL server and depending on the situation and place, PAFFREL monitors in the area were deployed or the local police or hospital were informed of the incident. Reports came from all over the country, including the North and East. People who got to know about this monitoring process came forward to physically help with the monitoring process.

This is the first time in the world that SMS has been used to monitor elections. The category that zMessenger is nominated under is "Best use of mobile in an emergency situation" and the other countries nominated in this category are Sweden, France, Turkey and Hong Kong. zMessenger is the only South Asian company nominated for this awards ceremony, organized by the World GSM Association and is the premier event in the international wireless community.

According to Jayomi Lokuliyana, Director Marketing of zMessenger (Pvt) Ltd, their company is a good example for other entrepreneurs that innovation can bring success and Sri Lanka is as competitive as any other country in the world.

The company began operations in February 2003 by three young proffesionals with an initial capital of Rs. One million. The company has major plans to take SMS and mobile based activities to a higher level with life enhancing activities.

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