South African TV and audio streaming app Tuluntulu is named one of Unilever’s Foundry50 top startups from around the globe. Tuluntulu is the first startup from Africa recognised by Foundry and will be introduced to relevant marketers and agencies from around the globe at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Unilever is one of the world’s biggest ad agencies with over 7 000 marketers at its disposal and 300 designated as mentors for the selected Foundry50 startups.
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“The reality is that the more the marketing industry can get behind startups, pilot with them, partner with them and help them scale, the faster not only will Unilever be able to invent the future, but so will the industry,” said Jeremy Basset, Unilever’s global marketing ventures director. “It’s good for the industry. It’s good for us as marketers.”
Tuluntulu is a mobile content platform that targets audiences in African and globally with African focused content. Besides being free to download the platform is also designed to minimise mobile data consumption, and claims to reach about 50MB per hour.
Since it launched in 2014, the MTN App of the year Finalist has been downloaded over 150 000 times not only in South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana, but also Saudi Arabia and Algeria. According to a press release, Tuluntulu has catered for over four million views so far with a user return rate of over 80%.
Some of the channels on Tuluntulu includes news outlets like Al Jazeera, ANN7, documentary channel Afridocs, and Sports among many others, including radio.
Advertisers can reach the app’s channel audiences with long-form programming or short-form advertising, sponsorship or digital messaging including banners.
Tuluntulu, and it’s fellow 49 chosen startups, have been chosen out of a group of 3 000 entries, of which most are UK or US companies. Some of these startups’ products include on-demand virtual focus groups for marketers, the ability to measure emotions with webcams or facial coding, and neuro-economic research for marketing. For a full list of the companies, visit Ad Age. For more information on Tuluntulu, stick to yours truly.