This is a product concept for a new type of email service. The concept emerged out of a personal need for better email management and classification... This email system would enable holding multiple profiles and multiple inboxes under each of the profiles. Indeed, a similar feature (though not such an advanced one) of 'multiple inboxes' has just been introduced by gmail. Also, the feature of multiple profiles has been introduced in a social networking website called Moli.com which launched sometime in early 2008.

1. Octamail – A product concept for our email service
Narrating two events surrounding the current way of using email accounts:
Scene 1: Leaving a professional Scene 2: Chanced upon an old
friend’s place classmate and now about to take
leave
Me: Chal see you. Bye. Keep writing.
Friend: Sure. But I forgot your id. Me: Chal see you. Bye. Let’s keep in touch.
Me: sidsoni@gmail.com Friend: Sure. What’s your id?
Friend: Oh okay. I got it. You’ve got mine? Me: sssoni@rediffmail.com
Me: Yeah. sandeep@gmail.com? Friend: Oh okay. It’s the same one…
Friend: Right. Me: Yeah right. What about you?
Me: Chal then. See you sometime. Friend: Jacob@gmail.com.
Me: Okay.
Friend: I’ll send you a mail immediately. So you’ll
Post this conversation
get my id. Bye!
After a few days, I receive an email from this
person regarding some professional matter. I Post this conversation
like to be a little systematic and therefore on
many occasions I use tagging. I tag this email My friend sends me a buzz email on
as such. sssoni@rediffmail.com.
My email account is now full of tagged emails. I use sidsoni@gmail.com for a professional
Sometimes I don’t know which to apply and I purposes while sssoni@rediffmail.com is used for
don’t remember which all tags I have. personal emails. I check both accounts regularly,
almost daily.
Narrating the same events using Octamail:
Scene 1: Leaving a professional Scene 2: Chanced upon an old
friend’s place classmate and now about to take
leave
Me: Chal see you. Bye. Keep writing.
Friend: Sure. But I forgot your id. Me: Chal see you. Bye. Let’s keep in touch.
Me: soni.office@octamail.in Friend: Sure. What’s your id?
Friend: Oh okay. I got it. You’ve got mine? Me: soni.personal@octamail.in
Me: Yeah. sandeep@gmail.com? Friend: Oh okay. It’s the same one…
Friend: Right. Me: Yeah right. What about you?
Me: Chal then. See you sometime. Friend: Jacob@gmail.com.
Me: Okay.
Post this conversation Friend: I’ll send you a mail immediately. So you’ll
get my id. Bye!
After a few days, I receive an email from this
friend regarding some professional matter. It Post this conversation
shows in my soni.office@octamail.in.
My friend sends me a buzz email on
I need not tag any of my emails now. Because soni.personal@octamail.in.
they anyway fall in the email accounts meant
for different purposes. I am able to access, both soni.office@octamail.in
and soni.personal@octamail.in on the same
interface. Saves me the trouble opening different
email accounts. By default the mails get classified.

2. Below are some statistics related to emailing. Clearly Yahoo is the most
preferred email service and Gmail and Rediff are distant second and third. Rediff
however is significantly losing its ground and so is Hotmail. Other competitors do
not have any significant share. Zapakmail and Indiatimes have launched new
services. However, there’s very little to differentiate.
The following two tables of statistics are quite significant in their import. It’s
common to keep 2 or 3 email accounts.

3. A staggering 85% of email users use two or more than two email accounts.
It’s quite a common phenomenon to observe people using multiple email
accounts for different purposes. It was also observed in a diagnostic study
conducted by summer intern Saurabh Khatri where he asked about 20
respondents some questions regarding their email usage habits. Barring one or
two respondents, all of them said they were using multiple email accounts and for
different purposes.
This fact raises two questions:
• Are the current email accounts not equipped with features through which
emails can be classified into different categories (based on the purposes
they serve)?
o Answer: Definitely they have such features.
• If current email accounts have such features as filtering, categorizing,
flagging and tagging why aren’t people using them? What is stopping
them or hindering them?
o Answer: Perhaps it’s too cumbersome each to put a tag to an
email. Perhaps it’s time-consuming too. Perhaps people just aren’t
aware of these services; that also explains that since they can’t use
these features they open multiple email accounts which in turn
results in opening two or three email accounts every time you have
to check mails.
Thus there are two ways in which people try to manage or mismanage their
emails:

4. 1. Try using tagging (in gmail) or flagging (in yahoo) or filters (in gmail or
rediff) to classify their emails. There’s no end - cumbersome.
2. Try opening different email accounts. Inconvenient and cumbersome.
Current methods of sorting aren’t the best as seen from the stats and even from
our general observations; observe the way we use our own email accounts. We
want them to be more systematic but we’ve never been able to match up with the
amount of emailing we do. Also, we do not want to open 3 or 4 email accounts
every now and then. It’s distracting and cumbersome. Here, Octamail comes to
the rescue. It is nothing but two simple intuitive improvisations on the current way
of using multiple email accounts.
The following diagrams explain the change:
Handling Emails Handling Emails Handling Emails
Traditional Way - 1 Traditional Way - 2 Octamail Way
(Post-receipt sorting of emails) (Pre-receipt sorting of emails but (Pre-receipt sorting of emails
through inconvenient multiple through multiple email accounts
email accounts) but with the convenience of one
• Create one email interface)
account for all
• Create multiple email
•
purposes Create multiple email
accounts for different
accounts for different
purposes with different
• Receive and check purposes with one
logins and passwords
login and password.
emails
• Receive and check
•
• Give out email ids as
Tag or Filter emails in different
per the purpose
email accounts.
• Keep doing it until you
• Receive and check
are tired and confused. • Open these accounts
emails of all email
everyday and endure
accounts on one
the inconvenience if
interface.
you are an avid email
user.
Convenient, more
systematic through a
simple innovation

5. Indicative Interface
Octamail.in
Welcome Siddharth!
Inbox (3) Inbox
soni.office@octamail.in 3 unread mails Create a new email account Settings Signout
Active
Starred You can make 4 more email accounts
Inbox
Chats soni.personal@octamail.in 2 unread mails Activate
Sent Mail
Inbox
Drafts soni.business@octamail.in 5 unread mails Activate
All Mail
Inbox
Spam soni.finance@octamail.in 1 unread mails Activate
Deleted Items
Marketing
Of course, marketing can be done in many ways. One email inbox could be given by default to a person where he only
receives discount offers/promotional offers from on various brands. Initially, this could induce the users to use this email
service more often and generate the necessary word of mouth.
Over-all
Executed carefully, this kind of email service could put us right there in the big league. On an informal level, we’ve
discussed with this many friends and colleagues and everybody has given really positive and eager response.