Spice Mobiles exclusively ties up with ibibo & Nimbuzz

Innovations through VAS & Applications

New Delhi, 17th Dec 2008: Spice Mobiles, India’s leading mobile handset company announced an exclusive tie-up with ibibo and Nimbuzz for VAS offerings on its products, recognizing the future trend of the industry. Understanding the growing demand for internet and related products, Spice Mobiles decided to launch these social networking and instant messaging services on its product portfolio and wap portal.

The company believes that such innovative VAS applications would influence the consumer’s buying decision in future rather than the normal features. Mobiles are increasingly becoming the first screen for all users, replacing TV and computers. Increasingly, people are banking on the mobile handsets to browse the internet and to check their mails, indulge in social networking, etc. Spice Mobiles wants to capture the market for the growing need of convergence on a mobile device by offering such applications and services.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Kunal Ahooja, CEO, Spice Mobiles said, “With soaring mobile usage and penetration, Indian VAS market is witnessing phenomenal growth. As the mobile handset is increasingly becoming the device of choice when it comes to listening to music, connecting to internet, clicking photos and VAS, our innovations and offerings bundled with Spice handsets are in line with our mission to provide our consumers a more engaging and fulfilling experience.”
Mr. Ahooja further added, “We are among the first few in the Indian market space to offer value-additions through embedded content on mobile handsets. We had earlier tied up with Thomson Reuters, Google, Opera and ngpay to provide these offerings embedded in the handsets which helped us strengthen our commitment towards a large cross section of audiences. The tie-up with ibibo and Nimbuzz is yet another step forward towards the goal of providing an enriching experience.”

Ibibo on Spice Mobiles will drive the next wave of internet-based social media platform in ones hand. Ibibo empowers its users to remain connected by creating their profiles, search for friends and people based on age, sex & location and for sending and receiving scraps. Ibibo is exclusively available to Spice Mobiles’ users over the wap portal wap.spicegang.in
Commenting on the association, Ashish Kashyap, CEO, ibibo.com said, “Social media on mobile is critical to our growth strategy and we will continue to invest and focus in this area.”

Nimbuzz, another path-breaking innovation offers instant messaging, location sharing, (group) calling, and file sharing across all popular instant messaging communities, including Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, GoogleTalk, AIM, and most importantly – one log-in and one contact list for all accounts. Nimbuzz is being introduced on Spice Mobiles’ upcoming model Spice S-940 in the initial phase and will soon be available across the portfolio.

Says Evert Jaap Lugt, CEO, Nimbuzz: “Our community appeals to handset manufacturers as they benefit from our global and local IM and Social Network community integration and comprehensive feature set – at a substantially accelerated speed to market, and without incurring additional overhead costs.
About Spice Mobiles Ltd.

Spice Mobiles Ltd. is a part of Spice Corp, a multi-faceted group with an exclusive telecom eco-system in India. With “Innovation” as the company’s mantra, Spice began the process of revolutionizing the Communication & Entertainment sector, with its new age technologically advanced state of the art mobile phones.

Debuting with handsets targeted at the entry-level segment, today, the brand is growing rapidly and has a bouquet of offerings targeting entry, mid & premium segments. Spice Mobiles Ltd has heralded a new chapter in the history of Indian mobile telephony by launching the first ever DUAL MODE PHONES. Continuing with the same trend of delivering breakthrough products, Spice Mobiles launched the new Spice D-1100, India’s first Dual Sim PDA (GSM/GSM).
Spice Mobiles is the proud winner of the Golden Peacock Award for innovative product / service for the year 2007. Spice Mobiles added more firsts to its credit by announcing the Global premier of the World’s First Movie Phone and Peoples’ phone at the World Mobile Congress, Barcelona in February 2008.

Riding on the success of its venture, Spice Mobiles Ltd. has strengthened its footprint, built a strong value proposition with the customers and established itself as a competitive brand amongst the host of International players. Moving forward, the company aims to achieve further brand acceptability among all target segments through a broader offering of cutting-edge handsets that combine mobile phone functionality with enriched content and smart device capabilities for greater high-speed voice and data capacity.
For further information please contact:

Nupur Bhardwaj / Vivek Sabharwal

LINOpinion – The LINTAS PR Division

Tel: (0) 9818 166416 / (0) 9811 546419

E-mail: nupur.bhardwaj {at} lintasindia(.)com, vivek.sabharwal {at} lintasindia(.)com