Kirusa, Developer of Voice and Visual Multimodal Infrastructure, Secures $3M First Round Financing by Innovacom and Deutsche Bank

Open Your Eyes and Ears to the Next Wave of Wireless Technology

BERKELEY HEIGHTS, NJ, July 11, 2001:  Kirusa, an emerging infrastructure developer of multimodal applications, has closed more than $3 million in funding in its first round of equity financing led by Innovacom, the venture capital subsidiary of France Telecom, and Deutsche Bank. Multimodal applications overcome challenges such as cumbersome keypad use or the inability to absorb spoken directions by offering data applications, which use visual and voice interfaces in an integrated fashion within the same application session. This advancement from current offerings is expected to significantly increase the usability, efficiency, and penetration of data applications.

This first round of financing will be used to further develop Kirusa's products, attract talent, and for business development activities. Among several angel investors participating in the first round is Louis Golm, founder and senior advisor. Louis joins the Kirusa board after serving as President of Vodafone Airtouch and CEO of AT&T Japan.

Multimodal applications: The next wave for wireless

Kirusa operates in a market where the number of mobile users in North America accessing data applications using a voice interface will grow from one million in 2001 to 56 million in 2005, according to Allied Business Intelligence, a New York based market research firm. Kirusa recognizes that from the explosive growth of mobile users using voice interfaces, there will be a demand from carriers to provide a convergence of voice and visual interfaces. This is accomplished by using multimodal applications.

"Multimodal interfaces are the next wave for the wireless market and Kirusa has the knowledge and talent to create products that will improve the experience of mobile data applications," said Aymerik Renard, managing director at Innovacom and Kirusa board member. "Innovacom invests in companies with innovative ideas and the ability to put those ideas into action through solid business strategies. Kirusa is a prime example of a company with these qualifications, and one that is bringing a viable business offering to a market starving for truly useful technologies."

"A wireless subscriber today can access a data application using the voice interface, or the visual interface from a wireless phone - however the subscriber cannot combine the voice and visual interfaces in the same application, even when it is clear that some parts of an application are better done in voice mode, while others are better done in a visual mode," said Inderpal Singh Mumick, founder and CEO of Kirusa. "We expect rapid adoption of multimodal offerings by wireless subscribers, carriers, and application developers. Kirusa's products will be key elements of the multimodal infrastructure."

"Kirusa's technologies are aggressively focused on multimodality. There is no fundamental reason why data applications should be constrained to one interface," said Sandeep Sibal, founder and CTO of Kirusa. "Kirusa intends to be a force within this space as a result of its development of multimodal technologies, coupled with its contribution to global consortiums such as the W3C."

Kirusa recently joined the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which develops interoperable standards and technologies to lead the Web to its full potential as a forum for information, commerce, and communication.

Previous to founding Kirusa, Inderpal Mumick was founder and CEO of Savera Systems, a global provider of Web-based billing software. He was also a member of AT&T Bell Laboratories, where his work led to numerous billing initiatives at AT&T and Lucent. Mumick, who holds a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University, has authored more than 15 patents and has written more than 40 essays for leading technical journals and conferences. 

About Kirusa

Kirusa is one of the leading global developers of Mobile Social Media and Value Added Services enabling mobile subscribers to reach out to their family and friends. Kirusa’s solutions include the hugely successful Kirusa Voice SMS service, the world’s most advanced Voice SMS solution, used by over 30 carriers around the world. Kirusa has pioneered a suite of social media applications that facilitate mobile subscribers to interact through voice, including the Call-n-Tweet application which helps users update their Twitter status using voice. Kirusa provides an open platform with APIs to enable third parties to offer mobile applications services to mobile subscribers. Used by mobile subscribers millions of times daily, Kirusa solutions are built on its patented and patent pending technology and its highly reliable and scalable open multimodal platform. Kirusa has been recognized as one of top 100 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 three continents. ‘Kirusa Voice SMS,’ is a trademark of Kirusa, Inc.

For more information visit: www.kirusa.com.

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Kirusa
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