SOURCE: Trutap Limited

September 24, 2007 09:44 ET

Trutap Secures $6.5 Million in Additional Series A Funding

The Tudor Group and Angel Investors Back First Free Mobile Service That Keeps Users Connected

LONDON--(Marketwire - September 24, 2007) - Trutap Limited (Trutap), the pioneering free mobile service that allows users to stay connected to their social lives, has today announced it has raised $6.5 million in a follow-on Series A funding led by entities affiliated with the Tudor Group(1). This brings total company financing to $13 million.

Trutap's latest funding comes on the heels of its Beta launch at TechCrunch40, in San Francisco. The funding will be used for further service development, team strengthening and marketing activities across key regions.

Doug Richard, Co-Founder and CEO of Trutap, commented, "We are passionate about building our free service and offering, an easy way for people to stay connected to their social lives. Aimed at 18-24 year olds, trutap is the first service to combine all the elements of a young person's social life into one. We see huge market demand in our service and this new infusion of capital will enable us to continue broadening our services and accelerate our leadership position in the industry."

Josh Dhaliwal, CEO of Wireless World Forum, commented on the market opportunity by saying: "Social networks will grow by 150% in 2007. We believe the long-term continued growth lies in mobilizing those relationships. We predict 2008 to be the breakthrough year not only for mobile social networks but also for mobile social networks in Europe and North America as mass use has so far only been limited to Asia. There are 45 million mobile social network users in Asia, globally this figure will be 178 million by 2010. Mobilizing social networks is not about trying to replicate the full MySpace, Bebo or Facebook experience on mobile -- but allowing the consumer to remain connected whilst unconnected."

The Tudor Group is joined by founding angel investors in this follow-on round.

Notes to Editors

(1) The Tudor Group, which consists of Tudor Investment Corporation and its affiliates, is involved in active trading and investing in the global equity, debt, currency and commodity markets.

About trutap

trutap is an easy-to-use free mobile service that for the first time, globally, combines all the elements of a young person's social life into one application. With trutap users can easily connect and converse with friends and family, wherever they are, whenever they want. trutap currently operates in over 200 countries across the world and will operate in more shortly.

What is trutap?

--  Combines all elements of a young person's social life in one
    application, for the FIRST time
--  Offers the ability to IM (MSN, Yahoo!, AIM (AOL) and ICQ), group
    message, upload text and pictures to blogs and send pictures via
    a mobile
    --  IM - access all accounts and converse with everyone at the
        same time
    --  Blog and Photo Sharing sites - supports Blogger, Blog.com,
        Livejournal, Flickr, Friendster, Xanga and others so text and
        pictures can be uploaded
    --  Messaging - picture messaging, online status and group message
        with 'all' reply functionality
--  No need for special configuration and is easy to download
--  trutap offers privacy - restrict access and block users
--  trutap will also be used via a web browser from a computer shortly
--  trutap is free, fun and just works!