Kirusa Partners with Airtel Rwanda for its Popular InstaVoice Celeb and Sports Services
New Providence, NJ and Kigali, Rwanda, Friday, February 20, 2015: Kirusa, the leader in voice messaging and social media mobile apps in emerging markets, today announced the launch of its popular social media services, InstaVoice Celeb™ and InstaVoice Sports™, on Airtel network in Rwanda. While InstaVoice Celeb service enables fans to directly engage with their favorite celebrities, InstaVoice Sports service allows Airtel subscribers to connect with and get updates about their favorite football clubs and teams. These services are available across Rwanda, to all Airtel subscribers, on both smartphones and feature phones.
From Celeb-to-fans and fans-to-Celeb, InstaVoice Celeb provides a seamless flow of messages. Using the unique voice micro blogging feature of InstaVoice, celebrities voice their emotions, and share their joyous and challenging moments, allowing their fans to hear them, a better option than just reading their text messages on a blog or media outlet. These messages are delivered instantly to subscribing fans, creating a ‘Voice Twitter’ like experience. InstaVoice Celeb service goes over and above the regular social networking platforms by creating a unique ‘connect’ using multiple channels of interactions, including one-on-one calls, meetings, merchandising, and events.
InstaVoice Celeb service has attracted many Rwandan stars, including musicians King James and Dr. Claude.
InstaVoice Sports lets subscribers connect with and get updates about their favorite soccer clubs and teams. It enables Airtel subscribers to receive daily soccer updates such as team news, pre and post-match analysis and quotes of team managers as well as players.
Speaking at the launch, Airtel Rwanda Managing Director, Mr. Teddy Bhullar said, “InstaVoice Celeb is a great way to connect with one’s favorite stars, and with InstaVoice Sports, our customers now have an easy access to sports voice bytes on their mobile phones. We are very excited to partner with Kirusa and bring forth these engaging services to our customers in Rwanda.”
Delighted with the service, Airtel brand ambassador and popular artist, King James added, “InstaVoice Celeb is a way to voice emotions and stay in touch with our fans without any media intrusion. InstaVoice is a great platform and it delights me how easily I can reach out to and stay connected with my fans. I love to use this service.”
The InstaVoice services have already proven their mark in other African countries. Starting with 20,000 fans in the first month of the launch, the InstaVoice Celeb has continued to catch the fancy of mobile users everywhere, surpassing 4.5 million fans in seven countries. Similarly, InstaVoice Sports has reached 3 million followers.
Sharing his views on the launch, Barinderpal Mumick, Vice President, Operations, Kirusa, added, “Not only does Kirusa have a strong technology road map and global experience, it also has a proven track record in working with celebrities in Africa. We are confident Airtel Rwanda subscribers will be thrilled using the InstaVoice Celeb and InstaVoice Sports services.”
About Bharti Airtel
Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, the company ranks amongst the top 4 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers. In India, the company's product offerings include 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce, fixed line services, high speed DSL broadband, IPTV, DTH, enterprise services including national & international long distance services to carriers. In the rest of the geographies, it offers 2G, 3G wireless services and mobile commerce. Bharti Airtel had over 312 million customers across its operations at the end of December 2014. To know more please visit, www.airtel.com
About Kirusa
Kirusa is the leader in voice messaging and social media mobile apps that enable mobile subscribers to “Have a Voice!” and share their stories with their family and friends across the globe. Kirusa’s solutions include InstaVoice®, InstaVoice Celeb™ and InstaVoice Sports™ apps, which are offered in partnership with more than thirty-five mobile carriers in Africa, India, LatAm, and Middle East, as well as via the app stores, and are used monthly by over 80 million mobile users in four continents. Kirusa solutions are built on its patented technology, and its highly reliable and scalable multimodal and cloud platforms, which process over one billion events a month. Kirusa has been recognized as one of top 20 most promising technology companies by Silicon India, and one of top 25 emerging technology companies by Smart Techie magazine. Headquartered in New Jersey and led by an experienced team of wireless telecom executives and technologists, Kirusa has offices in four continents. InstaVoice is a registered trademarks of Kirusa, Inc. InstaVoice Celeb and InstaVoice Sports are trademarks of Kirusa, Inc. For more information, visit: www.kirusa.com
For further inquiries, please contact
For Airtel Rwanda
John Magara
Brand and Communications Manager
Tel: +250 731 000 070
E-mail：John.Magara@rw.airtel.com
For Kirusa
Alchemy Corporate Communications
Anju Makin
India Tel: +91-9810170135
USA Tel: +1-973-536-2652
E-mail：anju_makin@alchemycc.com
