NEW DELHI: Sabeer Bhatia, the founder of Hotmail.com, on Tuesday launched JaxtrSMS, a mobile application that lets users send unlimited free text messages to any other phone anywhere in the world.

He claimed JaxtrSMS is the world's first mobile-based application for sending SMS that is completely open as the recipients do not need to have the app installed

It is already available as a free download for all major mobile operating systems - iOS, Android, Blackberry and J2ME. In fact, users in 197 countries have already downloaded the app within a few weeks since the soft launch, said Bhatia, who is CEO & co-founded Jaxtr with Yogesh Patel in US.

JaxtrSMS is unique in that a mobile user can send a text SMS to any mobile phone in the world without requiring the receiver to have the JaxtrSMS application installed on her phone. This "open" facet of JaxtrSMS distinguishes it from other free mobile messaging applications such as Whatsapp where messages can only be sent within a closed network to people who also have the same app installed. JaxtrSMS retains the number of the user and no new number is required while signing up for the JaxtrSMS service.

"15 years ago, we gave you Hotmail.com, the world's first webmail service that freed up e-mail from the confines of the desktop and aided the creation of a global communications network which was completely open and free for users. Today, we present JaxtrSMS which does to SMS what Hotmail did for e-mail. Now, mobile users can leverage our free and open application to send messages to their contacts anywhere across the world without having to pay anything," said Bhatia.

"JaxtrSMS was completely developed in India. I am proud to showcase this as an example of Indian innovation and ingenuity," said Yogesh Patel, president & co-founder.