Nimbuzz raises $15 million for their accessibility mission

Written on July 3, 2008 – 10:49 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Remember my ‘Wow!’ post about Nimbuzz last May? The Dutch mobile VoIP and IM start-up then launched a VoIP app that was compatible with more than 500 handsets which allowed free calling in 50 countries. I received a couple of comments on this lyric post, mostly from people who wondered why they should say other mobile VoIP clients like Fring and Truphone goodbye, and start using Nimbuzz. I figured that yesterday’s announcement about their second round of funding - $15 million from a round led by Naspers/MIH and Mangrove (known from Skype) - was a good excuse to dive a little deeper in that.

The Nimbuzz team relaxing

With 500k seed capital, a series A of $10 million in 2007, now another $15 million, 70 employees, and offices opening in Argentina and Brazil, there must be something special about Nimbuzz. Of course you could say they’re the prime example of a new bubble, but that would be a little too simple and cynical. So I’ve contacted Tobias Kemper from Nimbuzz to figure out what they offer that 129 other mobile VoIP start-ups don’t. Turns out it’s a rather technical story.

Kemper: “Fring is focused on 3G and Wifi, Truphone is trying to be more of an operator and isn’t free. And - as no one has understood this yet - we do buddy calling, we’re connecting existing communities. Fring also has buddy calling but nowhere near the seamless experience that we can offer, since we also work on GPRS and EDGE. Again, Fring does work on Edge, but not without credits such as SkypeOut.” Right.., so to sum it up: Nimbuzz has a broader reach as they support more mobile generations.

That’s a good thing, as Kemper told me they’re not just focusing on techies and early adopters - even though these groups are the only ones who know what mobile VoIP is about. Hence their effort to support to reach that number of 500 compatible handsets. Kemper: “We even work in more countries than Truphone with our dial in solution and had it since inception, whereas Truphone only came out with it last month and it seemed to be all the rage.”

As an expansion of their accessibility promise, Nimbuzz will soon launch a “Communicator” widget (terrible name, Kemper agrees) that allows visitors of your site and social profile or readers of your emails to connect to your phone, even if they’re not on Nimbuzz.

So to answer the questions of commenters like Travis and Bram, if you’re happy with Fring and Truphone, stay there. Though you might want to switch when Nimbuzz becomes more popular. I think they will, as they sincerely seem to focus on people who don’t own an iPhone or fancy Nokia phone. Yet we have to remember that the group with less-developed phones might not be interested in this whole mobile VoIP thing, as it’s hard to grasp. Also, the accessibility-mission has a major downside, with makes Nimbuzz - ironically enough - less accessible: the size of their app is around 1 MB - which is way too large. So that aspect needs some work.

Nimbuzz is currently expanding to Latin America and Africa, following the footprint of their investor Naspers/MIH - who already owns a stake in Mxit, a popular South African GPRS and 3G-based IM service. According to Kemper, Nimbuzz is “actively talking with operators and social networks to intergrate our solution and offer our features.” Sounds like they’ve no problems finding destinations for that 15 million.

I hope you like that post!

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3g, Africa, fring, gprs, latin america, mobile, mobile voip, Nimbuzz, south-africa, tobias kemper, truphone, wifi

About the author: Ernst-Jan is blogger and co-organizer of BLOG08, who previously worked in New York to cover news at the United Nations. Next to writing, he's also a singer in the band Christina Five. Follow him on Twitter or read his personal blog Dutchproblogger.com .

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5 comments/trackbacks to “Nimbuzz raises $15 million for their accessibility mission”

Nov 11, 2008: StudiVZ partners with mobile startup Nimbuzz
[...] in stead of building one of their own. I think that is a smart move. They have received over 15 million in funding I hope you like that post! The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just [...]
Nov 14, 2008: Speedy B News » Blog Archive » StudiVZ partners with mobile startup Nimbuzz
[...] in stead of building one of their own. I think that is a smart move. They have received over 25 million in funding from amongst others Mangrove and Holtzbrinck [...]

By Patrick de Laive on Jul 3, 2008

Nice writeup.
It looks like Nimbuzz has it all, money, employees, offices ion several countries and offers a everything you want service (Voip, IM, communicator widget, etc.).
I think it is a great achievement that they’ve raised so much money. This is an exception for a European company. I do think they have one problem though, they might offer to much! It is really hard to explain Nimbuzz in one sentence.

A normal person might explain services to others like this:

Skype: Free calls!
Fring: they offer free calls over IP on your mobile
eBuddy: IM service that combines all your buddies from other services into one place (on the web and on your mobile)
Nimbuzz: This is a really cool service, that enables you to make calls at a local rate with people who are abroad, you can chat on your mobile with your buddies, people can reach you on Nimbuzz even if you’re not ‘online’ and what is also a cool feature is that you can contact people from their social network page.

If they can figure out how to communicate the one and most important Nimbuzz feature, they have a good chance of succeeding.

[Reply]
By Nicolas Mertens on Jul 3, 2008

I guess I’m not getting this right, but in what way are Nimbuzz and fring different ??

because they support more technology, even if its a slower and older one like GPRS?? I don’t think that is going to make the difference…

I wonder how this story is going to end, knowing that skype etc still haven’t managed to live up to investor’s expectations!

[Reply]
By Tobias on Jul 7, 2008

Hi Nicolas,

Great question and thanks for the comment. I am Tobias, from Nimbuzz.

We respect Fring and really like what they have done with their API.

How are we different from Fring? In our approach.

To the naked eye we probably aren’t, both Nimbuzz and Fring have brilliant features. However, our approach is very different.

We are in a brand-new and early adopter market occupied by techies. Nimbuzz wants to be available to everyone, regardless of which device, connection, community, or platform.

My friends still buy a mobile phone based on design. Why? Because they use it for SMS and, well, phone calls. They don’t use the mobile Internet yet.

Instead of developing for early adopters and techies who understand what VoIP, UMTS and Symbian is, we are not waiting for the public to use the mobile Internet, but are reaching out to them with a broader portfolio. Therefore, we are approaching the market from multiple angles, working with operators and social networks, to make Nimbuzz more accessible. By the time the general public is using the mobile Internet Nimbuzz will be available for any community, device or platform.

In order to realize this idea we are partnering with operators and social networks to bring communities together while still offering people the freedom of choice.

By working together, Nimbuzz will bring presence, voice, and IM to social networks and operators and bridge the walled gardens that have been created to solve not only a consumer, but also an industry need.

We are trying to make it happen and are proud to already be partnering with 10 social networks, 3 operators and 2 VoIP providers throughout the world and we are planning to do a lot more than that. We’ll be announcing our partners soon and with users in 176 countries and reinforced investor commitment we are happy to have the right supporters for our cause.

Hope this helps, and please contact me with any questions you might have. Always happy to help. You can reach me at tobias (at) nimbuzz (dot) com

[Reply]

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