In what will no doubt become touted as a success story for its founders and its seed investors, and Ghanaian tech at large Saya mobile, popularly described as WhatsApp for feature phones has been acquired by Kirusa, a voice messaging and social media value added services company.
This is an acqui-hire, according to the official release on Kirusa’s website. The whole of the Saya team, its technology and intellectual property is now, well the property of Kirusa.
We're excited to announce our acquisition by @kirusa. Special thnks to all fans N to #Africa 4 #believing cc @rlamptey @badu_bizzle
— Saya (@sayachat) August 19, 2014
The release does not disclose the value or structure of the deal. TechCabal is reaching out to all the parties for comment. In the meantime, it appears that the acquisition talks have been going on for a while.
I can finally talk about this 🙂 My company @sayachat got acquired by @kirusa! #morevim #africa #Ghana
— Robert Lamptey (@rlamptey) August 19, 2014
Saya mobile was founded by Ghanaians and Meltwater Entreneurial School of Technology alumni, Robert Lamptey and Badu Boahen in 2011. The team gained worldwide recognition when it made it to the finals of TechCrunch Disrupt in 2012.
Saya Mobile has received funding from seed investors, the Meltwater Foundation, Forward Partners and Progress through Business.
