News Brief

Voice SMS in India

By 2010, global SMS traffic is projected to grow to 2.4 trillion messages, with revenues of over $65 billion. Voice SMS could be the next big thing. The service allows people from various walks of society to communicate by allowing them to send short voice messages.

Kirusa’s KV.SMS is a Voice SMS solution, which allows mobile users to send and reply to SMS messages with voice and it works on all handsets and networks.

Inderpal Singh Mumick, Chairman and CEO of Kirusa say, “With our expertise in combining voice with text technologies, users can speak their message. Our Direct Listen technology enables an entirely new user interface in which mobile users can directly access the voice message of interest without navigating through multiple messages.”

Kirusa had closed a $10 million Series C financing. The funding, led by Helion Venture Partners and Nexus India Capital, will be used to grow its sales, operations, and R&D activities.

Mobile operators like Tata Teleservices, Idea Cellular, BPL Mobile, and MTNL in India have partnered with Kirusa to offer voice SMS services. The application was first introduced in Bangladesh by GrameenPhone. The company is also in talks with other mobile operators like MTNL.

According to Sunzay Passari, VP-VAS, BPL Mobile, in Voice SMS the recipient can forward and reply to the sender through voice but in Voice Mail he cannot.