South African social chat platform Mxit is launching in India today, as part of the first phase of the company’s plan to roll out the service to more emerging markets. India’s high proportion of feature phones makes Mxit’s launch there a sensible one, given how low the barrier for entry is when using the app.

Mxit CEO Francois Swart said “Launching Mxit in India was a natural strategic next step, which allows us to continue building on the success we’ve had with the application in South Africa. Expanding our emerging market footprint enables us to bring our innovative technology to the masses, making the ‘smartphone’ experience affordable to every consumer, regardless of the device they use.”

Timed to coincide with the India launch of the service, Mxit has also picked today to launch their updated Mxit 7 apple for Android and BlackBerry users.

New features of the updated chat program include a group chat function for up to 50 people, the ability to change backgrounds on chat screens and tweaks to profiles. Mxit is also adding support for Android tablets.

Mxit’s chief product officer Vincent Maher said “We’ve really focused on speed and simplicity for these two platforms. We’ve taken away the home screen for BlackBerry users so they can access chats faster and added sound clips to group chat. On Android we’ve introduced fast account switching so that users can now create multiple profiles and switch between them quickly and easily.”