Nimbuzz and Virgin Mobiles Launches Vchatter in India

Mobile application developer Nimbuzz today announced that it has partnered with Virgin Mobile India (VMI) for its chat application ‘Vchatter’.

As a part of the agreement, Virgin mobile users will be able to access various instant messengers (IMs) like Yahoo Messenger and GTalk and social networking sites like Orkut by visiting VChatter through their mobile phone browser.

“In the first phase of the partnership, the users can access most of the IMs and social networking sites through the WAP (mobile website) site, while in the second phase, we will work with Virgin to bring out Java-enabled handsets, with an embedded Vchatter application,” Nimbuzz India Country Head Vikas Saxena. said.

The second phase is expected to begin by the end of September, he added.

The Vchatter wapsite will be hosted and maintained by Nimbuzz, while the promotion will be done by VMI.

Nimbuzz expects 10 per cent of the Virgin subscribers to begin using the application in the first year.

“In one year, we are targetting 10 per cent of the Virgin users...Virgin has about 20 lakh users currently, which is also increasing every day,” Saxena said.

Asked about revenue sharing, Saxena said, “Currently, we have a sharing agreement on the advertising revenues coming in through the application.” He, however, declined to divulge further details.

Steps to access Vchatter:

• Access Vchatter through Virgin’s popular v-bytes (http://www.virginmobile.in/v-bytes.html) Data Portal
• Vbytes WAP portal is accessible from the center button on your handset
• Login and register your communities to see all your friends
• Chat with your friends across social networks on the go!

In Vchatter we have a unique application which makes all Instant Messengers accessible to our customers with a single simultaneous login. Now the users will not have to repeatedly feed in different usernames and passwords for multiple IMs. And this is just the beginning!" Parikh added.