TxtWeb

txtWeb was a SMS text-based application platform for non-smartphone users residing primarily in rural India. It was founded by Scott Cook, Manish Shah, Manish Maheshwari and Clinton Nielsen.^[1][2][3] The founders jointly hold the US patent on “Method and system for providing a stateful experience while accessing content using a global textsite platform” , which forms the core of the txtWeb platform.^[4]

TxtWeb
Original author	Scott Cook
Developer	Manish Shah
Initial release	2011
Type	Application framework

It brought the benefit of the World Wide Web through text-based apps (hence, txtWeb), which were crowd-sourced from local businesses, publishers, and developers supported by the payment solution, txtPay. This platform was launched in 2011 and it grew to 12 million users and 1 billion transactions by 2014.^[5][6] It became the subject of GSMA's global case study on empowerment through information and won the NASSCOM and mBillionth 2012 Award for Innovation.^[7][8]

One of the interns in the txtWeb team was Evan Spiegel, who went on to create Snapchat (later rebranded as Snap).^[9][10][11]

Timelines

TxtWeb was founded in 2011.

By 2014, the platform had over 12 million users, 3000 apps and was used across 400 towns and villages in India.^[5][12][13]

It was shutdown around 2015 as smartphones became ubiquitous and data plans became affordable in emerging markets.