Kirusa Expands Series C Financing with Investments from Premier
Telecom Companies
Qualcomm leads expansion of Series C Round, validating Kirusa’s
technology leadership and market strategy
New Providence, New Jersey; Monday, November 5, 2007:
Kirusa, the leading mobile value-added services provider, today
announced the expansion of its Series C financing, bringing the
total round to US $ 13.3 million. The expansion, led by Qualcomm
Ventures with participation by Eastven Partners, the successor
fund to Ericsson Venture Partners, and Erasmic Venture Fund will
further fuel Kirusa’s global expansion to help meet strong
worldwide demand for its products, and to increase its R&D
activities. Original Series C investors include Helion Venture
Capital and Nexus India Capital.
Kirusa is the inventor of, and the world leader in, the hugely
successful Voice SMS application. Voice SMS enables people to
send SMS messages by speaking. A user presses the ‘star’
key, followed by the recipient's number, and speaks a short message
of up to 30 seconds. The recipient gets an SMS message from the
sender, and can "click" (or dial) a number in the message
to directly access the spoken message. After listening to the
message, the recipient can reply by voice, or by text, or can
forward the message. Voice SMS is the fastest growing value added
service in Asia, and is exploding globally with major deployments
under way in other parts of the world. Kirusa holds a patent from
the United States Patent and Trademark Office for its Voice SMS
technology. Kirusa’s customers include Tata Telecom, Idea
Cellular, MTNL, and BPL Mobile, in India; GrameenPhone and Warid
Telecom in Bangladesh; Ufone, Warid Telecom, and China Mobile
in Pakistan, and Globacom in Nigeria, amongst others. Millions
of subscribers are using Voice SMS to communicate with their colleagues
and loved ones.
Nagraj Kashyap, director, Qualcomm Ventures says, “Voice
SMS has a very strong value proposition that we believe will drive
revenue growth for mobile carriers around the globe. Kirusa has
established itself as a pioneering innovator in this space. Their
experienced management team, combined with the company’s
strong intellectual property position, will help Kirusa to build
on its already impressive achievements. Qualcomm is pleased to
take part in this funding round.”
"We are delighted that Qualcomm has made a strategic investment
in Kirusa," said Pankaj Sethi, President, Value Added Services,
Tata Teleservices Ltd. He further said, "We are witnessing
the continued growth of value added services in our businesses,
in both data and voice-led applications. In a multilingual nation
like India, where texting can be a challenge, Voice SMS and related
applications will open a whole new growth opportunity for mass
consumers. Leading industry players such as Kirusa will play a
significant role in this development."
Mark McAndrews from Eastven says, “Kirusa is poised for
rapid and continued growth and is set to capitalize on sizeable
market opportunities. Our relationships with key industry players,
such as Ericsson, not only give us unique visibility and perspective
on the market, but will also help Kirusa grow into global markets.”
Commenting on the new investors, Dr. Inderpal Singh Mumick, Chairman
and CEO of Kirusa said, “We hope to harness Qualcomm, Eastven’s
relationships with equipment providers and Erasmic, to accelerate
our progress towards the goal of becoming a key partner of mobile
carriers worldwide.”
About Qualcomm Ventures
Qualcomm Ventures was launched in the United States in November
2000 with an initial US$500 million allocation. Qualcomm Ventures'
aim is to support Qualcomm’s mission of enabling and fostering
3G and wireless Internet markets through strategic investments
in privately owned startup ventures. These strategic investments
include companies focusing on wireless communication technologies
and products serving consumer, enterprise and vertical markets
worldwide.
About Eastven
Eastven is a technology venture capital firm and is the successor
fund to Ericsson Venture Partners. Eastven is focused on the communications
technology market and invests in network infrastructure, software,
semiconductor, and enabling technology companies. Eastven is particularly
interested in next-generation IP-based infrastructure, and systems
and applications in the service network layer. For more information,
please visit www.eastven.com.
About Erasmic Venture Fund
Erasmic Venture Fund (EVF, www.erasmic.com)
is an early-stage venture capital fund. EVF has the mandate to
invest into early-stage cross-border (US/India corridor) startups,
and brings to bear significant operational experience of its Partners
to help portfolio companies. EVF has made investments in companies
that are in fairly diverse areas, such as Internet & Mobile,
Knowledge Process Outsourcing, and Technology Products.
About Kirusa
Kirusa is a leading developer of value added mobile services
that provide the freedom of multimodality. Kirusa’s solutions
include the hugely successful KV.SMS™, the world’s
most advanced “Voice SMS” solution, which allows mobile
users to send and reply to SMS messages with voice, and works
on all handsets and on all networks. The Voice SMS solution offers
the industry’s most intuitive user interface, with features
such as Direct Listen™ for direct access and reply to messages,
Speed Codes™ for quickly sending messages using codes, group
messaging, mobile number portability, convergence, interconnect,
and international Voice SMS. KV.SMS can be deployed in a matter
of weeks, and its fast user adoption has led to explosive revenue
growth for Kirusa's customers. KV.SMS is built on Kirusa’s
patented and patent pending technology and its highly reliable
and scalable multimodal platform. The platform’s ability
to manage and synchronize data and voice interactions, plus its
integration with IMS and 3G standards, enables customers to cost
effectively deploy additional revenue-generating services such
as messaging, search, information, and entertainment applications.
Kirusa’s solutions are deployed worldwide and used by tens
of millions of mobile subscribers. Headquartered in New Jersey
and led by an experienced team of wireless telecom executives
and technologists, Kirusa has sales offices in Paris, France;
Delhi, India; and Abu Dhabi, UAE; with a research and development
facility in Bangalore, India. ‘Kirusa Voice SMS’,
‘Direct Listen’, and ‘Speed Codes’ are
trademarks of Kirusa, Inc. For more information, please visit
www.kirusa.com.
Media Contacts
Kirusa
Anju T Makin
Alchemy Corporate Communications
Tel: +91 98101 70135
anju_makin@alchemycc.com
Qualcomm Ventures
Emily Kilpatrick
Tel: +1 858 845 5959
corpcomm@qualcomm.com
Eastven Partners
Mark McAndrews
Tel: +1 212 485 1116
mmc@eastven.com
Erasmic Venture Fund
Subrata Mitra
Tel: +1 650 472-1197
subrata@erasmic.com
© 2001-2008 Kirusa, Inc.