Airtel Partners with Kirusa to Launch Celebrity Connect

Connects Airtel Nigeria customers with their favorite celebs

New Providence, NJ and Lagos, Nigeria, Monday, 28^th July, 2014:  Kirusa, the leader in voice messaging and social media mobile apps for emerging markets, announced the launch of its popular social media service, Celebrity Connect, with Airtel in Nigeria. The service enables fans to reach out and connect with their favorite celebs. Top celebrities like Ace Comedian, AY, Nollywood stars Mike Ezuruonye and Kate Henshaw, actress, amongst others, are using the service to more personally engage with their fans.

Using Celebrity Connect, celebrities share their daily lives, thoughts, and emotions in their own voice with their fans. Participating stars can call a number or use smartphones to leave messages. These messages are then delivered immediately to fans, who can listen to what is happening in their most cherished celebrities’ lives, in the celebrities’ own voice, which creates a “Voice Twitter”-like experience.

Nigerian customers can call, and listen to what’s happening in their cherished celebrities’ lives over the phone. Furthermore, the fans get an opportunity to speak and engage with the celebrities in multiple ways on-line and off-line.

Speaking on the innovative service, Chief Commercial Officer, Airtel Nigeria, Mr. Maurice Newa, noted that the introduction of Celebrity Connect as a social platform which links Airtel customers with their favourite celebrities is an indication that the service provider remains committed to offering unique and quality products and services to its new and existing customers in Nigeria.

He further said: “At Airtel Nigeria we strive to create exciting experience for our customers through our offerings, that is why we have in our stable an array of innovative products and bespoke services which are unique and entertaining, providing new experiences to millions of our subscribers.

“Celebrity Connect is a product tailored to bridge the gap between top celebrities across various sphere of entertainment and their fans that always yearn to hear, feel close and know more about them. This platform therefore adds to the channels through which millions of fans can connect with their celebrities in Nigeria,” he added.

He also noted that Celebrity Connect as a mobile service platform rides on the strength of Airtel’s 3.75G service which delivers quality telecommunications voice and data services across the 36 states and Federal Capital Territory in Nigeria.

Celebrity Connect, which is powered by Kirusa’s Vobolo^TM social media platform, has been launched by Airtel Ghana and is now immediately available to all customers of Airtel in Nigeria. 

Commenting on the launch, Taranjit Singh Batra, Vice President of Sales at Kirusa says, “With the growth of social media, celebrities are more online now than ever before. However, connecting with them through these platforms is not always easy. But, with Celebrity Connect, fans not only hear their celebrities’ voice, but also get opportunities to interact and meet with them.  All this regardless of the mobile device they carry. I am optimistic Airtel Nigeria subscribers will relish every moment spent with their favorite stars.”

To subscribe, Airtel Nigeria customers can send name of favorite celebrity to 2656 e.g. Mike Ezuruonye to 2656.

The subscription cost N25 per day and N2.50 for recurrent listening to a message. Customers who may wish to forward the messages to other Airtel numbers will have to pay N10 extra.

About Bharti Airtel

Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading integrated telecommunications company with operations in 19 countries across Asia and Africa. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, the company ranks amongst the top 5 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers. In India, the company's product offerings include 2G & 3G mobile services, fixed line, high speed broadband through DSL, IPTV, DTH, enterprise services including national & international long distance services to carriers. In the rest of the geographies, it offers 2G & 3G mobile services. Bharti Airtel had over 297 million customers across its operations at the end of April 2014.

To know more please visit, www.airtel.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® and Celeb Connect™ services, 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 and one of 20 most promising 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. Celeb Connect is a trademark, and InstaVoice is a US registered trademark of Kirusa, Inc.

For more information, visit: www.kirusa.com

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 Airtel Nigeria

Emeka Oparah
Director, Corporate Communications & CSR
Tel : (+234) 802 222 1120 |O : (+234) 802 192 1120