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The mobile advertising market, with the largest user base in any media and global nature, is the new playground for online growth. In a free flowing interview, Dippak Khurana, Co-founder and CEO, opened up to Vikalp Dubey to share the story of Vserv.mobi, a powerhouse in the making.

Please tell about your and you partner’s background.

I started about 16 years ago and was a part of the team that launched the online edition of The Times of India. After moving from The Times of India, I became a part of the core team that created India’s first online ad network – Intercept Technologies, where we were also responsible to bring in WestBridge Capital’s first investment in the country.

In 2001, I moved from online advertising to the mobile technology field. I was the business head for Yahoo India’s non core business development. A tie up with Hutch brought Yahoo messenger and mail on sms. India was the first country in the world to do so. We also introduced value added services like ringtones and cricket scores on mobile. First 10 million ringtones sold in India were through us. In the year 2004, I moved to Mauj and launched the mobile internet portals for 2G services in GSM along with polyphonic ringtones, games, mp3 tunes and wallpapers.

Ashay Padwal is the Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Vserv and spearheads the technology and product development function of the business.

An expert in open source technologies, Ashay also has been at the helm of many initiatives at enterprises such as Yahoo! and People Infocom (Mauj) where he was responsible for project management, product development and technology functions. He also headed the App studio where he helped develop 300+ games and applications within a short span of three years. He was also Director at eMediCare Services Pvt. Ltd, a company that deploys technology to enable doctors provide a better service to healthcare seekers.

Starting on your own is always a big decision. What prompted that move? When and how did you start up?

There were many factors indicating the need for an ad support platform. We felt that people were getting out of carrier networks to explore the entire web. Mobile industry had already exploded and brought in large number of users for various applications. Enough people were creating new and exciting content and the demand for free content was on the rise.

Seeing all this we started Vserv in 2009.

What was the cost of setting up the company? From where and at what stage you got the funding?

With a team of 5 people and INR 30 lacs we started the company. A friend, Ajay Adisheshan, Founder of Paymate, gave us free office space and eventually supported us as an angel investor in his personal capacity. In March 2011, we raised $3 million Series A investment from IDG Ventures.

We now have a 50 member team and offices in Mumbai, Delhi and London, and one opening shortly in Singapore.

What makes the Mobile advertising model promising today?

As I have already explained, it’s the need to provide free content to the users and simultaneously generate money from it. That is only possible through advertising.

Also, it gives advertisers a chance to reach to the largest number of potential customers.

Please tell more about AppWrapper.

AppWrapper (previously named AdWrapper) is a technology for developers. There are certain resources for smooth functionality of the application. AppWrapper wraps the technology without touching the source code. One just needs to put the application that one wants to wrap, on the .exe file of AppWrapper and its done.

The application is then ready for the launch and to generate money.

AppWrapper is promoted as - The world’s simplest mobile ad integration technology that makes global ad-earnings possible from day 1 for games & applications developers. Please explain.

First of all it saves you a lot of time and money. You don’t need to put human resources to manually wrap the ads on your application. Typically this is done by writing the ad code in the source code itself which is a time consuming and tedious process and there are chances of making errors. Then you need to test the application across different devices and platforms, separately.

AppWrapper does all this work for you. It makes your application ready for feature phones as well as smart phones with different platforms like iOS, Android, Blackberry, Symbian, Windows and others.

As soon as it is available and user starts downloading the application, the developer starts receiving the money.

What’s a typical client profile?

Our customers are both developers and advertisers. We serve ads in over 200 countries and 70% of the media usage is from outside India.

We have direct customers like Yahoo and eBay and we have other major customers such as Starcom and Ogilvy & Mather. Some of the other international customers are RingRing Media (UK), NeverBlue (US), Glu mobile and Connect2media (London).

India Games, Twist mobile, Playbuff are some of the major developers that we work with, along with numerous independent developers.  At present, we have more than 10000 applications in our network.

Who are your key competitors in this field and what gives you the edge over competition?

AppWrapper, which is our flagship product, doesn’t have any competition as no other company has been able to develop such a comprehensive yet easy-to-use product. We have already applied for a patent for AppWapper.

In general, we compete with some companies, AdMob being one of them; but they don’t have the problem solving technology as good as ours or products for feature phones.

How well are you doing?

We have grown 10 folds in last one year and made a profit of $50,000. Our target is to become a $100 million company in the next 3 years.

What are your expansion plans?

First, is to strengthen our presence in all emerging markets like Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Apart from the Singapore office, we are planning to open operational offices in the Middle East and Africa in 2012 only.

Product enhancement is a continuous process and we are working to sharpen our skills on location specific ad delivery.

Please tell a little about the stumbling blocks that you have came across and how have you dealt with them?

The first and biggest barrier was internal; to have the conviction and to decide to start a new venture. Then the second one was convincing people to join us. And the third one was to raise capital; this is very difficult especially in India.

There are a few key aspects to solve these issues which I feel everyone should know.

Even when you are at a concept stage, you should meet investors to discuss and validate your idea. It gives you confidence. You should go and meet the people whom you want to hire one year down the line. Be fearless and share your progress transparently.

As you move ahead, people start forming an opinion about you and then join you.

Your take on entrepreneurship in India?

From 1950-2000, India was maturing as a country and then we started seeing the rise in economy and entrepreneurial spirit of people. I believe by 2020, India will become an innovation hub. This is the golden decade for entrepreneurs in India.

 

 

Author of this piece, Vikalp Dubey is an artist and a writer based out of New Delhi. He can be contacted at vikalpdubey@gmail.com

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