by Gugu Lourie
Global news agency Reuters’ News videos will be available on Tuluntulu’s tNews4U Channel.
“Reuters is interesting in that it gives us quality international content, under our own brand tNews4U. The vision is to add local (African) news content to create a unique news offering,” Tuluntulu’s founder Pierre van der Hoven, told TechFinancials on Wednesday.
He was excited to disclose the news as it will help the company to reach its half-a-million mark users in few months.
Launched in August 2014, Tuluntulu app targets audiences in Africa, and globally, with African focused content delivered on its mobile content platform.
The app has been downloaded over 485,000 times in 154 countries, with more than 85% classified as returning users.
Tuluntulu’s multi-language streaming content includes English, French, German, Hausa, Portuguese, Arabic and Kiswahili.
The cumulative usage numbers of the Tuluntulu app since launch in August 2014 has reached over 16.3 million screen views with over 3.3 million sessions.
“Africa is a continent experiencing explosive growth in mobile penetration and usage, driven by the decreasing cost of smartphones, tablets and data. This has driven rapid increases in mobile video consumption. Tuluntulu has become one of the largest providers of video or mobile content on the African continent, servicing this fast-growing market,” said Van der Hoven
Tuluntulu, which is an African mobile video on demand (VOD) service, was selected in 2016 by Interbrand as a global ‘breakthrough’ brand. The inaugural Breakthrough Brands, and the Future Growth Report celebrates a new breed of upstarts and challengers, the next generation of brands that are reshaping the market and embody a critical characteristic—growth.
In 2015, the company was named 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 start-ups that are innovating to help brands better connect, engage, and relate to people.
Tuluntulu is popular with users in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and Tanzania.
What differentiates the platform from its competitors, Naspers’ ShowMax, Netflix, iROKOTv, Kwesé, etc. is:
- The app is free to download and free to use i.e. no subscription fee, facilitating maximum demographic reach. Data costs are incurred when connected via mobile networks.
- Mid-quality video is data-light (+/-50MB/hour, as low as R1.50 /hour) – this is at a lower cost than all comparable video services.
- Content is available over Wi-Fi or all mobile operator networks
- Unique scalable cloud-based technology and multi-compression delivery streams.
- Onscreen Twitter-feed interaction with and between individual viewers.
- Multiple revenue-sharing and co-branding models with content partners.
- Customer messaging via in-app and out-of-app notifications.
