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naveen thank you so much for joining us
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thank you
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so take me back to 2007 what
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what was happening back then and how did
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this all get started um
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so 2007 is uh you know i used to be
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working in
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uh well i used to be living in san
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francisco um
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and i was always very keen on and you
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know i came out of business school
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and i was very keen on trying to do
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something with a small company and i
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felt
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um you know
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that the market in general on mobile
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phones is just going to explode
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it's just going to go through the roof
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across the world and given that we you
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know you're starting off and we
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basically felt that we might try and do
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something only in india
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and that's where we actually started off
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our business so we started off the
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business in india
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tried to build something which we felt
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would take off in the indian market
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but very soon realized that you know
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it's not something that we need to
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constrain only to the indian market
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and we can actually expand this outside
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of that and that's what we did we
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basically you know post
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we're raising some capital we started to
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move outside of one market
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uh essentially eventually went first to
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the developing markets because we felt
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that we can
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you know that's a large population
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fairly untapped something that we can go
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after ourselves
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uh and then essentially move to the more
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developed markets and that's what we
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have done so today we are in 140 markets
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we show ads to uh about 150 million
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people
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we um we expect that over the next 12
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months we'll be
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reaching to about uniquely to about a
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billion people across the globe showing
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advertising to them
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and i think what we've done is we have
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been able to create
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an infrastructure and we are in the
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process of doing that as we
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go along create an infrastructure for
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creating new business models
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uh for you know on the mobile internet
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platform
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across the world and you know different
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countries and different regions are
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going to use utilize it differently
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and that's what excites us because you
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know over the next few years
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roughly about three and a half billion
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three and a half to four billion people
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will be using mobile internet from their
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phones
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and if that's the large population
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that's going to use mobile internet
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you know the potential is quite high and
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you said you
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you started in in developing markets um
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because that was
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and and and how um and and that is
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partly because
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that is the only screen they have i was
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curious about more about that right so
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developing markets there were two
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arguments that why we started there
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one was the macro which is exactly what
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you said is look
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there are about a billion people in
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china a billion people in india
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a billion people in africa and rest of
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the those regions another billion so
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you're talking about our 4 billion
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population
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which will essentially have mobile phone
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as their first screen
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and in majority of the cases as the only
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screen and if that's the case
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and if we have a significant share of
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that market
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we would build a large business the
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second was the competition in that
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market was just
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non-existent so we felt that initially
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you could try and get into the u.s
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market etc whereas there was more
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competition
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or we could try and build it into a
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market where we have less competition
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and
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try and control and own large portion of
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that pie
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which seemingly was not as small as you
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know many might not be able to predict
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but it's actually fairly large
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uh and so we essentially went after that
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that market and so we have a different
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growth strategy which was
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to go a classical growth strategy would
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go west and then move east and we
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basically said we can reverse that and
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we
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went east and we're now moving we have
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now moved to west
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i see and did the landline
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infrastructure of these companies
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did that these countries did that uh
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make a difference as well
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it does because they don't have landline
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infrastructure and that's the beauty of
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it because they don't have landline
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infrastructure they move very quickly to
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the mobile infrastructure they don't
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have pc infrastructure they move to
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mobile infrastructure
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and so all of these and they so for
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example they don't have like gprs and
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you know slow speed data connections
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they move directly to 3g infrastructure
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so those things help because that means
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the adoption rates
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are you know are phenomenally high in
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these regions and so you capture the
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market very quickly
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and market becomes large very quickly
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and the other thing is the digital
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advertising does not exist in these
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regions
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uh it's very small um because the number
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of people on pc are small
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so what happens is as as mobile phone
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users on internet increase
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the first time the dollars start to move
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from traditional media to the developer
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to the digital media and that happens
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only on directly on mobile so
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that also creates a very strong
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opportunity in that market
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and and now you're in the united states
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um you you began here
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last year how has that been going that's
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been phenomenally well because you know
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what happened is
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the the u.s market over the last three
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years went through a consolidation phase
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and so the total number of players at
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some point of time were like 15 20
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players
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because of consolidation because of the
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downturn that
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list got rationalized and is down to
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like few handful of players
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and so when we looked at it we said
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there are two things which happened one
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is
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the the the total number of competitors
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essentially came down so there was a
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strong opportunity for us
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the second was the phenomena which the
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whole mobile internet phenomena
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was very global so there are publishers
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in in in us market
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which had you know anywhere from 50 plus
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of their business now starting to come
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from you know global markets
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and where we were already working with
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them very strongly so it was an easier
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entry for us into this market and we
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basically utilized that as a lever to
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get into this market and
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and we have seen phenomenal growth so
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today i think we're either the third or
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the fourth largest in the market
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with a very significant scale and
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over the next six to twelve months we
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look we look at it and you know feel
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very excited about where we can take
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this to
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so you had that global knowledge that
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you were able to attract
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right so for a change i think it doesn't
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happen in many businesses because
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in most of the businesses u.s acts as a
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leverage in in other markets
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but in our business the international
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markets acted as a strong labor to build
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our business in u.s market
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and so what is the how is mobile
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advertising
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different from other forms of digital
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media between
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the pc internet advertising versus
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mobile advertising the difference is
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a couple of a few of the following
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points one
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the the ability for you to essentially
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target
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uh is phenomenally high in the mobile
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space because
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you know i my the information that i
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have about the user is just more
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the information that one has about the
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kind of things that you're doing on the
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phone is just higher
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so we can target better and utilize that
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the location becomes a very strong
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factor and the location continues to
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change for a user
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with a pc the location was more more
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static
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but here in in case of mobile the
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location as a parameter for targeting is
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more dynamic so you can use that as a
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parameter the call to actions that one
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can generate out of a mobile mobile
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uh phone advertising are many many
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because you can do
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you know you can make you can at the end
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of the advertising you can actually have
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the person
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call somebody you can have somebody
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download something on their phone
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because you know they carry their phone
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wherever they go
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so if you basically are doing some kind
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of a couponing etc
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you can get the get the coupon on the
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phone and then you can use it when
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they're at the point of sale
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so the the you know the targeting the
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scale
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the ability to do call to actions are
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drastically different when it comes to
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uh mobile phones and that's why it's a
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very strong medium
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and scale by the way which we didn't
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touch upon is a phenomenal factor
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because
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whether it's uh us or rest rest of the
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world
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the scale of mobile internet is just
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significantly higher
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uh maybe not so in u.s right now but
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it's just getting there very
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so and so what's your outlook for the
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future i think as i said
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you know we look at the whole space as
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about you know roughly about four
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billion people using the mobile internet
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across the world that when that happens
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it'll be the largest medium ever
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i think it'll be the largest medium
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after air and water etc
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and if that's the case and we and if we
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are able to build out
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a strong platform providing the
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infrastructure for people to do things
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on it
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you know it's a very very promising
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future that we're looking at
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great well it's exciting times thank you
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so much for joining us thank you so much
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you
