Nimbuzz is in talks with some new Indian telecom operators to launch a co-branded application that would offer international calling at subsidized rates, a deal that would help Nimbuzz to increase its subscriber base significantly, while carriers in the country will be able to increase their international calling revenues and get a piece of the $1 billion pie that makes up India’s long distance market. These revenues have been taking a hit due to the growing popularity of free calling apps.
“Discussions are on with some telecom service providers who are keen to ramp up their international calling businesses. We will announce something around this in the first quarter,” Chief Executive Vikas Saxena told ET Telecom.
Saxena was short on details but did clarify that the company is “not partnering” with Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular and he looks to make Nimbuzz one of the “two clear leaders” in the industry, “with WhatsApp being the number one player.”
Nimbuzz looks to be one of the “two clear leaders” in the mobile calling app industry
As of March last year, Nimbuzz had 150 million users globally, with 25 million of these in India and 21,000 new registrations a day. Like most apps with the exception of WhatsApp, Nimbuzz reported registered users, and it’s not known exactly how many are active. Still, users in India alone made an average of over 1 billion minutes worth of calls and send and receive 102 billion messages per month at the time.
Of course, this deal is in addition to the one signed with Specranet last October to enable lower cost international calling, and these types of partnerships will be increased in the coming months.
We’ve said before that carriers and OTT providers would have to play nice in the modern world, and Nimbuzz looks to be the company that pushes these deals forward, creating a playground where telcos and OTT apps alike can mutually benefit one another, as well as their customers.