Clickatell scoops honours at Silicon Valley event

Clickatell, a world player in the Online SMS mobile messaging gateway game, has scooped the San Jose/Silicon Valley Business Journal Idea and Innovation award for Social/Economic Impact for providing a service that improves people’s daily lives.

The event, held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, featured winners from the biotech, software, hardware and consumer products industries.

“The goal of the Idea and Innovation Awards was to recognise some of the most innovative products and people here in Silicon Valley,” said publisher James MacGregor.

“Several of the honorees have achieved a lot in a very short amount of time and the companies are truly groundbreaking.”

Clickatell provides a solution that enables individualised mobile messages such as text alerts that can improve people’s day-to-day lives in terms of safety, convenience, awareness, and savings.

As mobile use continues to climb, Clickatell says its SMS Gateway is gaining recognition as a cost-effective channel of real-time communication and emergency use in remote areas where internet access is unreliable or non-existent.

Emergency alert services like MapAlerter and Universal Alert use Clickatell in rescue efforts including incident and damage assessment, mobilisation of rescue workers, transmission of emergency instructions, and managing evacuations.

Following the earthquake in Haiti, Clickatell extended free SMS messaging services to organisations providing aid and helped to reunite missing children with their families. The ubiquity of SMS allowed the lines of communications to remain open during emergency services and disaster relief efforts.

The “store and forward” nature of SMS meant that messages could be delivered as soon as there was a “window” of network coverage — and this window didn’t need to last more than a few seconds. As a result, many organisations in Haiti were using SMS services to communicate even as the capacities of networks were stretched thin.

“It is an honour to be recognised as a leader in delivering innovation that has a measurable impact on improving people’s ability to communicate, work and live more efficiently, and stay safe and informed,” said Clickatell CEO Pieter de Villiers, who was at the event in Mountain View to accept the award.

“We’re just beginning to see how mobile messaging is changing lives, not just for business-to-consumer interaction, but also for emergency alerts. At Clickatell, we are making it easy and cost effective to connect people, companies, ideas, and help in times of increased competition and conflict.”