Digital Marketing in India: 2 Big News!

SVG Media Pvt. Ltd.

Indian Adtech gaint Smile Vun Group (SVG) Media, a joint venture between Manish Vij’s Vun Network and Harish Bahl’s Smile Group, has acquired mobile ad network SeventyNine and digital agency NetworkPlay, the digital media unit of German firm Gruner + Jahr (the publishing division of European media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG) for Rs 92 crore(over $15 million), making SVG Media one of the largest independent mobile advertising networks by revenue in India.

SVG has platforms that can work on mobile, web and banners and is on track to earn revenue of Rs 210 crore this fiscal, “After consolidating our position in India with this deal, we hope to become the largest digital advertising platform in Asia,” said Manish Vij, 36-year-old cofounder of SVG Media who claimed his company has a 7% market share in India.

G+J had acquired Capital 18 funded Networkplay from Webchutney in 2012,to have a digital presence in the country.
In the same year, the publishing arm snapped up Seventynine (founder Mr. Bahl of SVG) which was launched in April 2012 by Smile Vun Group, through Networkplay.

The current interest of SVG media in Sevetynine is attributed to the newly developed patent-pending app Jacket,
an automated ad-integration technology which speeds up video ads in apps and intelligently studies consumer behaviour before suggesting pop ups.

The deal is said to have made SVG the largest advertising technology company with revenues of over $40 Mn commanding a market share of 7%.

The two digital portal will work as independent brands along with SVG Media’s other AdTech platform Tyroo, DGM and PrecisionMatch.

Seventynine focuses on rich media inventory, especially videos and HTML5 to enrich user experience.

SVG servicing clients like Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, PayTM, MobiKwik, Myntra, Jabong, Citibank, Standard Chartered Bank, has its presence spread across India, South East Asia and the Middle East.
The average daily visitors and total page views for SVG Media stands at 5.3Mn and 1321 Mn respectively.
Founded in 2007 by Harish Bahl and Manish Vij, SVG had raised $2 Mn from Accel Partners, Whatsapp’s Neeraj Arora and Silicon Valley-based VC firm, Xplorer Ventures.

The digital advertising spend in India is expected to cross INR 3,500 Cr by March 2015.

According to the company, the acquisition makes SVG Media the largest advertising technology company in India,
it is now reaching to over 100 million internet users on mobile and PC. Manish Vij, Founder and CEO, SVG Media, said, “It had been our dream to build a platform of this scale to help our advertisers meet their performance marketing objectives and give best monetisation for our affiliates for their mobile/PC assets. We are doing this by affiliate marketplace, video and data products.”

Gruner + Jahr is one of the world’s leading media groups and its Electronic Media Sales (EMS) division is a leader in the digital advertising space in Europe. The company had acquired a majority stake in Networkplay for an undisclosed amount back in March 2012. Networkplay was incubated in 2008 by digital advertising agency WebChutney and was funded by Capital18, the venture capital arm of the Network18 group. A few months later, it bought SeventyNine from SVG Media for an undisclosed amount. So SVG has essentially bought back the business from Gruner + Jahr.

Interestingly, SeventyNine’s previous co-founders Chirag Shah and Deven Dharamdasani, who had left the company earlier this year,will lead the business post acquisition. “We are excited to be back and working with the same team at SeventyNine,” said Shah. Earlier this year, NetworkPlay had announced a new management under the leadership of Viren Anand, its co-founder and director- operations & publisher alliances.He was joined by Hitesh Trehan, director- sales & new initiatives at NetworkPlay. Networkplay also acquired captcha-based ad platform yoCAPTCHA for an undisclosed amount earlier.

The announcement came in the wake of co-founder and former CEO Ampreet Singh’s exit from the company in July 2014.

Started in 2006, SVG Media is a digital media network with a presence in India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The company is serving business in over seven countries and houses performance, mobile, and data targeting businesses such as Tyroo, PrecisionMatch and DGM.

Interesting to know that Networkplay was in Deal with some of it’s Affiliates to acquire their workings in 2011-2012, but ended in dissolving itself to Smile Vun Group(SVG).

With this deal, G+J effectively exits the digital advertising platform in India, and it will perhaps rue 2012 as a year of ill-fated decisions: it had acquired Seventynine from SVG Media in November 2012, a few months after it had bought NetworkPlay from Capital18 and WebChutney.

Also in another move, the SVG Media has informed that its data backed display ad network Velocity doesn’t exist anymore.

Another Big news from the same industry is that Ibibo Ads has stopped it’s operations for the digital marketing, as of now. This is again a boon for SVG Media. Ibibo Ads has stopped it’s Digital Marketing operations last of Nov 2014.
Its advertising wing for the promotions and marketings had been steeply loosing the grip and the company decided to hold on the operations for some time , which may end in a long “pause” mode.

Source : Our Reporter thru inputs from different Agencies.