South African-based Tuluntulu – a mobile streaming platform app that enables its users to watch TV anywhere and anytime – has now been downloaded over 210,000 times in 154 countries. By Gugu Lourie
Tuluntulu is popular with users in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Mozambique and Ethiopia.
The company has also enticed users from Zimbabwe.
The cumulative usage numbers of the app since launch has reached over 6.4 million screen views, more than 1.3 million sessions, with 210,000 active users and over 83% returning users.
The app receives 35 000 monthly unique users and over 880,000 screen views per month.
Tuluntulu was founded by Pierre van der Hoven, a serial media entrepreneur who was involved in starting numerous media companies including eTV, and YFM.
The company was recently selected by the Unilever Foundry 50 as one of the top 50 start-ups in the world.
The first, and only one from Africa.
The inaugural Unilever Foundry 50 is an initiative to find the world’s top 50 marketing technology startups that are innovating to help brands better connect, engage and relate with people.
The video-on-demand (VOD) market is hotting up in South Africa and is seeing new players such as OntapTV and ShowMax targeting users. Neflix is rumoured to be targeting to enter the local market in 2016.
MTN FrontRow, one of the first movers in VOD market, has it has zero rated the data usage for streaming content on its platform. The decision to zero rate data usage means that MTN customers who are subscribed to FrontRow can watch thousands of their favourite movies and TV series available on the FrontRow bouquet without incurring any data costs.
Last week, VIDI, South Africa’s first VOD streaming service, said it was offering anyone who registers on its website the chance to enter a competition to win a 2015 Ferrari 458 Spider worth more than R5 million rand.
The company and MTN FrontRow doesn’t disclose their subscriber numbers.
While Altech Node has become the first victim of the country’s competitive VOD market.
