Sumeru Venture Partners have gone live with Tango, a mobile social networking and dating service in Kenya based on Mobestar's mLite mobile delivery platform. After a long search for a suitable partner Sumeru signed contracts with Mobestar earlier this year and have now launched a mobile-only dating service (Kenya's first) which caters for young adults between 16 and 35 seeking casual or long term relationships.
Market Background
According to research from Frost & Sullivan the market for mobile social networks in Africa is set to increase tenfold by 2015. Mobile connections already outnumber fixed line connections by 10-to-1 and 70% of internet users already use their mobile phones to access the internet. At the end of December 2009 Kenya's four mobile phone operators had a combined subscriber base of nearly 20 million people. The total number of subscribers for East Africa is forecast to reach 99.5 million by 2015 and infrastructure improvements look set to reduce the cost of telecommunications in the region by 60 per cent over the next 7 years.
Internet usage is growing at over 10 per cent annually and is projected to continue growing due to increasing availability and reducing data charges.
Social networks are rapidly growing in popularity in Kenya, and because the fixed-line infrastructure is so lacking, the mobile phone has become the platform of choice for young Kenyans keen to meet and interact with other like-minded individuals.
The Tango Service
Sumeru's new "Tango" service has been designed to provide an easy-to-use, engaging, fun, and compelling way to meet people of the opposite sex directly from their mobile handset. The service runs on virtually any GPRS/Internet enabled phone using the standard browser (i.e. no software or plug-ins need to be installed).
Users can create personal profiles, upload photos and are able to browse and search for other users based on factors such as age or location. When they identify a potential date they can send them a "wink" or a message and they can create a list of personal "favourites". The service also includes a "voting" capability and the ability to view the most popular members. This contrasts with the majority of existing dating services in Kenya which are largely SMS-based tools offering users little functionality or interactivity. There are currently no other mobile internet based dating services addressing the Kenyan market.
Tango will be widely promoted using a combination of channels including mobile advertising, newspapers and magazines, radio and TV, billboards, direct mail and internet marketing.
Ambrose Olwa, Sumeru's CEO explains, "It is our intention to establish Tango as the No. 1 flirting and dating site in Kenya. After a thorough investigation of the market we selected Mobestar as our partner because of their strong track record of delivering successful mobile applications and their proven ability to deploy their services internationally. We are confident that Tango can become a leading brand name in Kenya and once the service is established here we plan to roll the service out to other countries in East Africa."
Peter Richards, Mobestar’s Executive Chairman said: “We are delighted to be working with Sumeru who are clearly at the heart of the exciting East African market and have great plans for the future. We had a thorough look for an innovative partner in Africa before finding the right one. We look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with Sumeru.”
To access the service visit www.tango.co.ke from any internet-connected mobile phone.
Mobestar has delivered a mobile version of www.ScotMcKee.com. The author and B2B marketing guru recently commissioned Mobestar to deliver a mobilised version of his web site to coincide with the launch of his new book "Creative B2B Branding (no really)". The mobile site allows visitors to access the site easily and quickly as well as purchasing the book and social networking.
Scot McKee said : “I have been espousing the virtues of going mobile for some time now and the book launch provided me with ideal opportunity of practicing what I preach. ‘Going Mobile’ has delivered a number of tangible benefits already extending the site to new audiences as well as allowing e-commerce on the move. I am delighted with results so far and look forward to extending the functionality of my new mobile platform. “
Peter Richards, Mobestar’s Chairman, said : “The mobile market is now providing brands and communities with the ability to extend their reach into new demographics. mLite, our mobile infrastructure, is providing this ability to a growing number of customers who are starting to realise the potential of this channel. www.ScotMcKee.com is one of those enlightened brands that have embraced this medium and are now getting early payback“.
mPromo and mInfo are the first members of a new family of mobile applications being released by Mobestar. Based on mLite, a highly robust and scalable framework, Mobestar’s set of applications are pre-configured allowing brands to ‘mobile enable’ their product, service or offering in a fraction of the time a conventional ‘build-your-own’ solution takes.
mPromo is a marketing application designed to take the pain out of using the mobile phone to reach customers while mInfo targets organisations that manipulate large quantities of data which can now be accessed and viewed easily using a mobile handset.
Peter Richards, Mobestar’s Chairman said : “We are pleased to be one of the first mobile suppliers in the world to be offering fully functional ‘out of the box’ mobile solutions. Whether you are a marketer looking to reach the global mobile audience of 4.65 billion handset owners or an organisation that needs to disseminate large amounts of MI/BI data to a mobile workforce we are confident that Mobestar will accelerate the process for you. mPromo and mInfo will soon be joined by a other innovative mobile applications as we continue to supply major brands with their mobile solutions.”
Mobestar will be starting its financial year with a move to new offices. The company will be operating from two locations from 1st March. All management, sales and marketing will now be based in the company’s new headquarters at 100 Pall Mall, London. The development team and infrastructure will be based in a new data centre which is located in Letchworth, Hertfordshire. This facility will be run by the company's CTO, Steve Rogers, who commented:
“Setting up a dedicated development resource presents us with a fantastic opportunity to deliver the best possible service to our customers and allows the development team to focus on the quality and timely delivery of mobestar’s mobile solutions”.
Sentience TV has agreed a contract with Mobestar to provide a mobile channel for their courses. Sentience is an organisation based in the UK delivering educational content utilising a variety of ‘rich media’ sources. Sentience TV has recently launched a number of educational programmes delivered via internet and television channels.
Richard Sille, Sentience’s founder said “We have been searching the market for a long time for a business partner capable of providing a mobile platform for our courses. After lengthy investigations, it was obvious that there were very few providers who could understand our business requirements, let alone provide us with a workable solution. Mobestar and their mLite platform were the only viable solution.”
Peter Richards, Mobestar’s Executive Chairman said “We are delighted to add Sentience TV to our growing list of customers following a successful, in-depth trial of our mLite platform. The platform was recently launched offering free trials to all prospective customers. We are now seeing great success from that programme.”
Mobestar have signed a definitive contract with Sumeru Venture Partners to deliver a branded version of their mDate mobile dating platform for the growing mobile community in Kenya.
Ambrose Olwa, CEO of Sumeru Venture Partners and a veteran of the telecommunications market in East Africa said: “We are delighted to have concluded our agreement with Mobestar after spending considerable time investigating the market. We selected mDate because it is one of the few mobile dating applications that has consistently performed internationally for a number of years. We now look forward to rolling out the mDate application to many countries in Africa in 2010 and beyond. The mobile entertainment market in Kenya is growing very fast with most services currently SMS-based and mDate is perfect for our targeted demographic of 16-35 year olds.”
Peter Richards, Mobestar’s Executive Chairman said: “We are very pleased to be working with Sumero Ventures who are clearly a leading light when it comes to developing new opportunities for the telecommunications market. We have been looking for an innovative partner in Africa for some time and we are looking forward to a long and fruitful relationship with Sumeru.”
The mLite™ service offering provides a mobile delivery platform for web content onto any mobile device and provides a quicker, cheaper and easier solution for launching mobile websites. Delivered as a suite of standardised software products, mLite™ has been designed to automate a previously manual process without the need for any specialist development or coding skills. Intelligent caching rules ensure the fastest mobile response possible and a simple web-based interface allows organisations to define and manage multiple mobile sites.
mLite™ has been the result of the cumulative effort of the Mobestar R&D team, headed by industry veteran Stephen Rogers, who said: “Since the advent of the mobile web and it’s increasing adoption we have been looking for some time to provide a simple and effective product to automate the production of mobile websites which remain current despite multiple changes at the back end. The concept of Web 2.0 engenders interactive information sharing, interoperability and user-centred design and the mobile web should be able to provide exactly this. mLite™ empowers users to maximise the potential of the mobile web without the need for specialised developer resource.”
Marcus Bennett, Mobestar’s MD, said : “We are delighted to be bringing mLite™ to the market as the first packaged product to automate mobile website production. The early user results from mLite™ have been very encouraging and the fact that customers have been able to produce mobile web sites extremely quickly without any technical development resource highlights the immediate benefits of working with Mobestar. We expect it to have far reaching results, especially with organisations that need to launch new mobile initiatives on a regular basis. We are offering mLite™ on a free trial basis whereby prospective users simply need to register to use without any obligation.”
CCCToday are mobilising their business network (the Customer Communication Community) using mLite. Following a successful set of user trials CCCMobile is now being rolled out to the community members which number in excess of 2 million.
Julian Bradder, founder of CCCToday, said: “We are delighted with the initial results provided by the new application, CCCMobile. Basic functionality such as blogging and content distribution has been given a new dimension. We have been looking to mobilise our application for some time and Mobestar were the only company to understand our requirements and deliver a solution. It also allows us to add new functionality as members request it.”
Marcus Bennett, Mobestar’s CEO commented: “After a successful soft launch of mLite we were very pleased with the initial results. The market has been crying out for a product like this for some time and we are now in a position to fulfil this latent demand. CCCToday are the company’s first customer in the business networking space and we look forward to building on this success.”
A global distribution agreement will see Mobestar supplying a white labelled version of its mobile technology platform to Global Media Vault's (GMV) rapidly growing list of international customers. GMV's clients in the Middle East, Europe and South America will be offered an enhanced suite of mobile solutions fed from GMV’s unique, core platform, 'the Digital Vault'. The Vault, contains one of the world’s most comprehensive catalogues of digital entertainment content, and will now incorporate Mobestar's mobile platform to provide additional services to its customer base.
Mathew Porter, GMV's Chief Executive said: "We are delighted with this new partnership which will provide us with both enhanced capabilities and new channels to market. We have a very close working relationship with Mobestar which is already paying dividends. There are now over 3 billion mobile phones in use today and this partnership provides us with the ideal platform with which to, capitalise on this channel"
Marcus Bennett, Mobestar's Chief Executive said "We have been looking for partnerships to provide content, complementary technology and global reach for some time now – GMV gives us all of those things. Having repositioned the company to provide branded mobile services beyond our traditional core markets we could not have wished for more dynamic partnership"
Global Media Vault Ltd ("GMV") provides clients across the world with market-leading digital entertainment retail solutions. GMV operates one of the world's most comprehensive catalogues of digital entertainment content across music, video, games, mobile and audio/ebooks. GMV works with clients from a wide variety of different industries, from mobile operators to retailers to publishing companies, and leads the digital content market with continuous innovation and creativity.
Mobestar partners innovative brands and acts as the catalyst for their mobile strategy. Mobestar operates from headquarters in Victoria, Central London.
top of page