KIRUSA partners with PERFORM to offer Sports Connect to Mobile Subscribers

London, U.K. and New Providence, NJ, 6th May, 2014: Kirusa, the leader in voice and social media solutions for emerging markets, and digital sports media company PERFORM, owner of Goal, the world's largest digital football brand that reaches more than 47 million fans per month, have announced a joint partnership to bring exciting sports content to mobile subscribers in Africa. With this partnership, PERFORM has granted rights that enable Kirusa to send daily and breaking voice and text updates relating to English, French and Spanish soccer clubs.

The partnership covers major countries of Africa, providing exclusive rights to Kirusa to promote, distribute, and sell services based on the content from Goal into many African countries. The partnership is already active in Ghana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Senegal, Uganda, and Rwanda.

Goal produces updates and alerts and sends them to Kirusa’s Vobolo platform in the cloud, using APIs provided by Kirusa. The Vobolo platform then distributes the updates to Kirusa platforms deployed in carriers, and from there to the mobile subscribers of the carriers. The production includes a daily soccer news bulletin of each club, each of which is 60-90 seconds long, and focuses on a mixture of team news, professional pre and post-match analysis, with quotes from leading managers and players. With over 17 sports clubs to choose from, like Real Madrid, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United, FC Barcelona etc., the sports bulletins are available in English and French languages.

This soccer news update service has been named ‘Sports Connect’. Subscribers can listen to Sports Connect from their mobile phones, or from the web. Mobile users receive a notification on their mobile phone, and can listen to the news at their convenience. The passion for Sports Connect in Africa can be gauged by the fact that the service has already garnered over 1.5 million followers.

Commenting on the partnership, Inderpal Singh Mumick, CEO, Kirusa, said, “We have always been driven to offer engaging experiences to mobile subscribers. We are excited that PERFORM has partnered with us to produce exclusive sports content in a new medium, and to bring it to fans across Africa. A love of football has engrossed the entire world. Kirusa is proud to bring the joy of football to African fans via daily voice updates of scores, analysis, and team events.”

Daniel Price, Head of Distribution, Africa & Middle East at PERFORM, added: “We are very pleased to work with Kirusa to deliver our digital content to mobile football fans in Africa. Our synergy lies in complementing each other’s core competence, and presenting an engaging and holistic service to mobile users. Kirusa’s Vobolo platform made technical integration easy, while having immediate visibility and transparency on the usage has enabled growing our business operations.”

Nicolas Men, Information & Entertainment Category Manager at Tigo DRC, says, “Tigo DRC is delighted to see the phenomenal customer response to this service. To have achieved this traction with subscribers in such a short time frame is testament to the value Kirusa brings with this service and our ability to implement fast what our customers like.” He further added, “With mobile financial services and internet access, Tigo DRC is building the path to the digital lifestyle. All the new Kirusa services will help to reach this target sooner.”

About PERFORM

PERFORM Group PLC is a FTSE 250 listed business and the world’s leading digital sports content group. Through unrivalled global content collection, production and distribution capabilities PERFORM creates digital products that drive traffic, engagement and revenues for over 2,600 of the world’s leading media and betting companies and enable brands to engage with over 180 million sports fans every month.

www.performgroup.com

About Goal

Goal is the world's largest digital football brand. In April 2014 Goal attracted 53 million unique users from more than 200 countries. Goal is completely multi-platform, with over 14 million fans and followers across social networks and in April 2014 generated 58% of visitors from mobile devices alone.

www.goal.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 the hugely successful InstaVoice service, 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 open multimodal platform, which processes over one billion events a month. 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 four continents. InstaVoice is a registered trademark of Kirusa, Inc.

For further inquiries, please contact

For Kirusa
Alchemy Corporate Communications
Anju Makin
Tel: +91-9810170135
E-mail：This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

For PERFORM

Ian Westover, Group PR Manager, PERFORM
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , +44 (0)7415 663 582