Why zapak mail?

I caught the ads for Zapak mail for the first time the other day at a theatre in Vashi. I also found posters in the loo – just above the pot – quick downloads, in bold type, with two block arrows pointing down. Made me pause – and smile – I remember not being very impressed the last time I saw an ad inside the theatre loo. The ad campaign as a whole – what I have seen of the tvc and posters – built on the theme of fast, quick is very entertaining – and interesting use of media.

[Images: agencyfaqs]

But. Two things.

How relevant is quick as a proposition in emails now – is that not the least one expects from en email provider? Rediffmail said quick some years ago – and rediff was quick – compared to other email services at that time. But now, is quick enough – how does it make your service different from any other? And more importantly, if you have a bad internet connection, like say, sify as I used to, how quick is quick?

The other and larger question is, why has zapak suddenly shifted focus to email from gaming? After splashing hoardings across the city with Salman Khan saying inscrutable things, they have suddenly gone quiet on the gaming side of the business – which is their mainstay. This again made sense during the initial dotcom boom – offer email to attract visitors to the site and so on (rediff and indya and suchlike) but now? Why does it seem to me that zapak is trying to live in the past.

I do not understand this whole strategy in the first place – why an email service at all for a gaming business? If the idea is to attract a bunch of adolescents, then what is to say that email will do that better than gaming? And who else will this attract – apart from those with a mental age of 14 – I mean, come on, imagine an email id @zapak.com… why would anyone want it? (The only reason I can think of is to get the user name you want – which you probably cannot find on yahoo and gmail – but I cannot honestly imagine 14 year olds wanting their own name as their user name when there are a million weird handles out there)

gmail gave me all I wanted in an email but did not know who to ask – viz. storage space and more importantly, a series of email exchanges on one page – email as conversation, if you will. I am curious – what can a new email service offer customers? Is there anything that you have wished for and never found in any other service? Reliance has a lot of money – I am sure they have some long term strategy in place, the way the younger brother is pouring money into this venture. But what that is, eludes me for the moment.