Thursday, June 30, 2011

Altruist Group acquires stake in Vegam Solutions


The Altruist Group, which owns the mobile marketing firm Mobile2win, has acquired a minority stake in the Mumbai-based value-added services (VAS) provider Vegam Solutions. Altruist has not disclosed the valuation and the percentage of stake acquired in the company.
Vegam Solutions offers voice-based gaming services. The VAS firm has already developed 10 games related to racing, card games and puzzle-based games, based on the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. The firm will distribute or make available its games through various telecom operators.

"The gaming service is targeted towards mobile users who do not own high-end phones or smartphones. To begin with, we have tied up with Tata Indicom and Tata Docomo to offer voice-based gaming services. Later, we will tie up with more operators," says Ingersol Jayakumar, founder, Vegam Solutions, in conversation with afaqs!. Prior to this, Jayakumar was national business head, VAS, Tata Teleservices.
Speaking to afaqs!, Rajiv Hiranandani, executive director, Altruist, says, "The investment is in the form of seed capital and aimed at kick-starting the foray of this company into voice-based gaming solutions." He indicates that Mobile2win will offer voice-based gaming solutions to marketers, as well.
Hiranandani adds, "Mobile VAS is a dynamic industry and the objective of this investment is to also get more entrepreneurs into the fold, thereby keeping up the pace of innovation and new ideas."
Jayakumar also reveals that Vegam Solutions plans to venture into the retail space of the value-added services business. He says, "We will make available various value-added services such as caller tunes, ringtones, wallpapers and other content subscription services of various operators on a single platform in the mobile and web space." source

No comments:

Post a Comment