Kirusa, a global leader in providing telecom & social media solutions, launched its InstaVoice Celeb service in partnership with Airtel, one of the leading mobile operators in Madagascar, which includes Hip hop singers Farao and FlaviOne, and stand-up comic Barhone as some of the celebrities offering fan engagements.
InstaVoice Celeb Service has already gained prominence in a number of countries like Haiti, Zambia, Dominican Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. The company also has plans to further this service across more countries in Africa and Latin America.
Mohamadou Konkobo, Marketing Director at Airtel Madagascar, said on occasion, “We are delighted to partner with Kirusa and deliver an outstanding first of its kind service to Airtel subscribers in the country. The effort echoes our spirit of innovation, and I am sure that users will find equal delight in connecting with their favorite celebrities.”
The InstaVoice service has surpassed 100 million monthly active users as of mid November, 2016.
DIVERGE talked to Anju Thakral Makin, the Corporate Communications Consultant at Kirusa to find out more:
Where did this idea come from?
InstaVoice is one of the most popular mobile services in Africa and Latin America today.
Prior to anyone else, Dr. Inderpal Singh Mumick, Founder, CEO and Chairman of Kirusa foresaw the potential of Africa. Despite prevailing wisdom and trends, he planned an ‘Africa Out’ strategy for Kirusa. He had a vision – to enable every African to ‘Have a Voice!’ to communicate with their friends, family, celebrities, politicians, media, government services – irrespective of whether they owned a smartphone or a plain feature phone, or whether they were on a voice network, or a data network.
Today, Kirusa is building mobile apps for consumers, and working with more than 35 carriers for distribution and monetization. Kirusa is re-inventing and transforming mobile messaging with smartphone apps – making voicing as cool and easy as texting. What InstaVoice presents is sheer magic – one can see one’s missed calls and voicemails, even the voicemails one sends to others, on an integrated voice and text chatting experience – an industry first again.
Who is the team behind it?
Kirusa leadership team comprises of innovative and driven executives, who have extensive experience in wireless telecommunications and a range of technologies such as messaging, voice platforms, social media, smartphone applications, speech recognition, and broadband networking. The team holds more than 30 patents issued combined, with several more pending.
The resourceful team headed by Dr. Inderpal Singh Mumick comprises of Vice President for Product Management, Surinder Singh Anand; Chief Scientist, David A. Berkley; Chief Financial Officer, Baldeep Dua; Vice President of Engineering, Raja N. Moorthy; and Vice President for Operations, Barinderpal Singh Mumick.
Why is it significant?
Well, at a time when the US had achieved a saturation point in voicemail traffic, Africa had a minimal 1% adoption rate. This is where we saw an opportunity and decided to close the gap.
In another industry first, Kirusa thought of and implemented a new service called InstaVoice Celeb to let celebrities – movie stars, musicians, religious heads, sports stars, politicians – connect and engage with their fans. Celebs send ‘voice tweets’ in their own voice, which are delivered instantly to their fans, creating a ‘Voice Twitter’ experience. For fans, it is all about realizing their dreams – as they engage with celebs in multiple ways; in one-on-one calls, attending their events, getting their merchandise, meeting them in person.
As we speak, the InstaVoice Celeb service has a remarkably huge subscription of 11 million users and more than150 celebrity signups across multiple carriers and geographies.
How does the partnership with Airtel help?
We have been associated with Airtel across a number of countries in Africa like Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda and now Madagascar. The partnership has helped us deliver some of our most ingenious services like InstaVoice, and has allowed the users to access a seamless interface of communication. Also, InstaVoice Service happens to have the largest subscription base in Nigeria. The latest launch in Madagascar echoes Airtel’s spirit of innovation and subscribers in the country can have a firsthand experience of Kirusa’s novel platform; wherein they can engage further with their favorite celebrities.
How can people participate?
For fans, this is a special stage to see their favorite celebrities in close quarters, through updates on projects and personal life. They dial a short code to subscribe to this service and the chosen celebrity’s voice updates are delivered daily to their mobiles. The service has a voice blogging feature, where celebrities express their emotions and share their joyous and challenging moments by dialing a specific number. The entire process creates a ‘Voice –Twitter’ experience designed to facilitate fan-celeb engagement.
What is the best feature of this product?
Voice updates make celebrity-fan engagements personal, and memorable. Fans experience a life up-close with their favorite celebrities, connected over voice. This inherent feature of the product is robust and, unlike any other celebrity-fan services.
How important is diversity to your company?
Diversity has always been important to Kirusa, considering its outreach, and efforts to make a mark in the emerging markets of diverse continents like Africa and Latin America. Kirusa has hired native and local populace executives to lead initiatives in individual countries and always made sure that the team is well aware of region-specific requirements before making a new launch.
