Wabona Partners up with Cinemo

Wabona, Cape Town based video streaming service has partnered up with RLabs start-up Cinemo to provide its large library of African TV shows, films and documentaries on Cinemo’s mobile video distribution service. Cinemo distributes video content via applications on MXit and Google Android respectively. Wabona is Cinemo’s largest content partner to date.

Cinemo is the brainchild of Shane Vermooten, a filmmaker and Co-Founder, who started Cinemo to solve the problem of distributing video content to the people without smartphones and fixed line internet while providing another revenue stream and new audiences to filmmakers. With the help of Marlon Parker and RLabs, who invested in Cinemo, Shane managed to build a successful video distribution service delivering films, Public Service Announcements (PSAs), music videos and documentaries to Feature phones. Cinemo is unique in that it makes video content more accessible and data friendly by providing the video content in 4 minute clips and between 550kbs and 4MB in file size. To date Cinemo has over 420 000 users on its applications in just 8 months.

Wabona and Cinemo have been working together since June 2013 running tests and building a business model. In recent weeks Wabona has decided to strengthen its exclusive partnership with Cinemo by offering to buy an equity stake in Cinemo with a view to becoming a majority shareholder in the next two years. This was announced at RLabs’ Innovia13 event on 24 October 2013, its annual Demo Day for its start-ups.

Wabona CEO, Simbarashe Mabasha is a strong believer in Cinemo stating “Cinemo’s visionary and innovative thinking led to an exciting mobile video content distributing service. This was one of the main reasons we partnered up with them” Mabasha went on to say “Wabona sees great value in Cinemo, Cinemo with Wabona content can reach markets and audiences not many VOD services can today. People don’t necessarily need smartphones or fixed line internet to enjoy Wabona, they can watch it via Cinemo anywhere in Africa”.

“We are very excited about the opportunity to reach a larger audience across Africa” Cinemo Co-Founder, Shane Vermooten said. “The partnership with Wabona allows us to offer our users quality Pan-African content, and we are looking forward to developing a strong presence across the continent.”

Wabona provides premier solutions for users who want to watch African movies online and on mobile devices. Wabona is excited to open it library to African audiences that may not have fixed line internet or smartphones. For more information, visit www.wabona.com or download the Cinemo Application in MXit on in the Google Play Store.

About Wabona

Wabona is an online video streaming service from South Africa that offers African TV shows, films, documentaries for audiences in Africa and the African Diaspora. It is a division of Cape Town-based media company Afrikan Dust Media Group.

About RLabs

Rlabs is a global movement that provides innovative solutions to address various complex problems. It creates an environment where people are empowered to make a difference in the lives of others. Every year RLabs runs a 9-month start-up incubator which nurtures and grows innovative start-ups looking to impact their communities.

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