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Being in news for raising $15 million from <keyword id="6357097" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="venture-capital">venture capital</keyword> firm <keyword id="145350" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="IDG-Ventures">IDG Ventures</keyword> and hedge fund MaverickCapital in March, <keyword id="713876" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Vserv">Vserv</keyword> is news once more. The smart data platform for mobile marketing in India and South East Asia, which help companies by providing data on consumer buying behaviour to target their ads is now entering online recharge market in India. 
 
It’s unique in the way that consumers can recharge DTH and mobile operators on banner or the ad provided. 
 Vserv will enable Telcos to promote segmented offers across data and voice. By driving these transactions, Vserv enhances <keyword id="107848" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="ARPU">ARPU</keyword> for Telcos. While for DTH operators, this translates into selling segmented channel packs leading to a major jump in subscriptions and higher revenue. 
 Commenting on the launch of the commerce solution for Telcos and DTH, Dippak Khurana, <keyword id="1718234" type="POSITION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Co-Founder-CEO">Co-Founder &amp; CEO</keyword>, Vserv said, “With Vserv’s massive reach of 120 Mn unique users in India combined with this commerce solution creates a disruptive development in the mobile Internet ecosystem. While our Smart Data platform is a revolutionary offering for mobile marketing, with our commerce solution, we now complete a user’s <keyword id="6374782" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="journey">journey</keyword> from intent to purchase. This unique proposition provides a powerful opportunity for consumer-facing companies, who are seeking to tap into the growing mobile internet user base.” 
 
Vserve claims in its press statement, the total revenue of telecom and direct-to-home (DTH) services in India stood at around $31 billion last year 2014. Roughly 10% of these revenues were generated online and this side of the business is expected to grow by 300% in the next 4 years.

Now an advertisement on phone can recharge your DTH

India’s mobile Internet ecosystem is currently at an inflection point. And a unit of Maverick Capital, a 21 year-old US hedge fund, has leveraged this changing situation to enter India after it agreed to <keyword id="47916" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="invest">invest</keyword> in <keyword id="713876" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Vserv">Vserv</keyword>, the smart data platform for mobile marketing in India and South East Asia. Vserv, which was co-founded in 2010 by <keyword id="897115" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Dippak-Khurana">Dippak Khurana</keyword> and Ashay Padwal, has grown to an organisation that employs 200 people in its offices across India and South East Asia. Matthew Kinsella, managing director, <keyword id="2749979" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="80" keywordseo="Maverick-Capital-Ventures">Maverick Capital Ventures</keyword>, said, “We are highly impressed with the rapid pace of Vserv’s growth, its smart data platform and management team. Vserv is uniquely positioned to drive the mobile Internet ecosystem in India and South East Asia through their exceptional data assets.” Dippak Khurana, co-founder &amp; CEO, Vserv, said, “Maverick has a successful history of investing early in large scale mobile platforms globally. We are delighted to be their first <keyword id="6357097" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="venture-capital">venture capital</keyword> investment in India as they bring capital and deep technology domain expertise.” This partnership between Vserv and Maverick Capital Ventures builds on the latter’s extensive history of successfully investing and supporting mobile businesses globally to become large scale platforms. With this investment, Vserv has raised a total of $18 million to date, including its first round of $3 million which it raised from <keyword id="145352" type="CITY" weightage="80" keywordseo="IDG-Ventures-India">IDG Ventures India</keyword>. 

	Manik Arora, founder &amp; MD, IDG Ventures India, said, “As an early investor in Vserv, IDG welcomes Maverick as a valued co-investor. We are delighted to further support the company as it goes into high gear.” 
 

	By 2018, the Internet user base in India alone is expected to zoom to 500 million users from currently existing 200 million users. This is primarily driven by mobile users who are expected to contribute over 80% of this base.
 With rich data profiles of more than 120 million mobile Internet users in India, Vserv has strategically positioned itself to deliver mobile marketing for over 500 clients. These clients belong to sectors like consumer goods, e-commerce, retail, telecom, banking &amp; <keyword id="6354241" type="COMPANY" weightage="80" keywordseo="Financial-Services">financial services</keyword>, mobile entertainment and gaming. (Image: Vserv)

Mumbai-based Vserv raises $15 million from Maverick Capital Ventures

We had a discussion with Mr <keyword id="897115" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Dippak-Khurana">Dippak Khurana</keyword>, CEO and Co-Founder <keyword id="1020574" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="vserv-mobi">Vserv.mobi</keyword> and he revealed some interesting facts about the Indian mobile ad network, how Vserv makes money and what new features did they introduce to the platform in 2013. 

	Most people know Vserv as a mobile advertising platform. Tell our readers something more about the company.

	Vserv.mobi is a global mobile advertising network for app developers, publishers, advertisers and telecom providers focused on emerging markets. Our business model enables content creators, mostly developers of mobile apps/games and mobile site publishers, to monetise their work. At the same time, advertisers can use these apps and games as an effective vehicle to reach their target customers. The company derives its core competitive advantage from our understanding of emerging markets and the unique challenges faced by the mobile ecosystem in these markets.
 

	Some of our critical differentiators include:

	Broadest platform support: Vserv.mobi is the only ad network with app media across smartphones, tablets and smart feature phones, thus providing advertisers unparalleled reach and engagement.
 

	Unique Go-To-Market strategy: Focus on emerging markets as the sweet spot, with revolutionary products that convert market challenges into opportunities.
 

	Product differentiators

	• AppWrapper: AppWrapper is the only app monetisation platform in the world that works with ‘one click’, without any coding required from content creators. It helps developers monetise using both premium ads and micro transaction models through a ‘maximum income with minimum effort’ approach.

	• AudiencePro: AudiencePro is a game-changing platform in mobile advertising that makes Vserv the first ad network in the world to enable an audience profiling layer on its inventory, via telco integration. The platform was created with the objective of enabling audience profiling in a scalable manner through telco integration and blending it with existing ad network parameters. The objective was to enable advertisers to target consumers in a granular fashion using demographics, spending power, network usage, location, content relevance and device-specific data.
 

	Today, we take great pride in being recognised as a company with an aggressive growth path, in addition to being evangelists and thought leaders of the mobile advertising industry.
 

	Can you explain how the monetising module at Vserv works? Plainly put, how does Vserv make money?

	Our business model is built around facilitating comprehensive monetisation, which includes both advertising and micro transactions. Here are the business models for our main revenue channels:
 

	Advertising: We partner with app developers and publishers to serve ads on their inventory. Advertisers looking to reach users on mobile, pay us for displaying ads on the apps and we share 60% of this revenue with the developers/publishers where these ads are served.
 

	Micro transaction: We partner with app developers and publishers to help them monetise their apps. A developer uses the AppWrapper to enable multiple types of pricing models and can plug in his choice of billing connectivity pipes (app store billing, direct telco billing, etc.).
 

	Users make micro-transactions on the app, such as pay per play or daily subscription, and the developer makes a revenue share with us on the EUP (end user price). We offer over 90% of the revenues generated from the user to the developer.
 

	What are the new features introduced in 2013? We introduced our AudiencePro platform this year, a platform that has redefined the way targeted advertising is done on the mobile medium. <keyword id="15491" type="COMPANY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Airtel">Airtel</keyword> evaluated our platform and partnered with us to become the first telco to deploy AudiencePro. 

	We also saw that mobile advertising, while being super targeted, still lacked the key targeting parameters (like demographics and spending power) required by brands. While this data exists with different entities across the ecosystem, it is fragmented and, therefore, unusable in a scalable manner. By bridging this gap, the AudiencePro platform has allowed mobile advertising to achieve its full potential in the emerging markets. It now operates as a mass media that offers unprecedented audience targeting.
 

	The platform allows advertiser targeting based on demographics, spending power, network usage, location, content relevance and device-specific data, to reach the right audience. The platform also supports all creative formats, including impactful rich media formats such as full screen ads, video and HTML5 interactive ads.
 

	Can you share a roadmap and what can we see from Vserv in the near future? Our goal is to become the #1 mobile ad network and app monetisation platform across the emerging markets. The company’s aim is to become a $100 million company by 2015. We are rapidly expanding our services across more countries in regions like <keyword id="48890" type="COUNTRY" weightage="40" keywordseo="Latin-America">Latin America</keyword>, <keyword id="1009187" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="40" keywordseo="the-middle">the Middle</keyword> East and Africa. We will continue to roll out innovative platforms and products that will help push the mobile ecosystem forward. 
	 
	
		Over the past three years, we have been steadfastly ramping up our technology innovation engine to solve the unmet challenges of global mobile app developers.
	 
	
		If you (Mr <keyword id="1914214" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="Dippak">Dippak</keyword> Khurana) want to develop an app independently, what concept will you choose? Will it be free or paid? And how will you promote it? Although the app <keyword id="34412" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="40" keywordseo="economy">economy</keyword> is growing rapidly, there are a few areas like government services or healthcare that still have a lot of scope for innovative services, especially in the emerging markets. Basic government services covering passport processing, RTI, municipal corporations, Aadhaar cards, etc., need to be available on one centralised platform for easy access. A mobile app can play a very important role in collating, disseminating and accessing these services, thus helping people cut down on precious time. The app can be based on a ‘freemium’ model, promoted through mobile ads.

This Mobile Advertising Network Wants To Get To The Number 1 Spot And Aims To Become A US$100 Million Company By 2015

A new year has just begun. What will it bring for all of us—booming market, scientific breakthroughs? We think 2015 will be the year when emerging markets will outshine developed markets, and most importantly, the year when mobile Internet penetration will grow by leaps and bounds. The later would make it imperative for the marketers to change their strategies for <keyword id="564900" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="Mobile-advertising">mobile advertising</keyword>. Marketers need to adapt to the evolving consumer behaviour (where they are mostly consuming content on their mobile devices) with a mobile-only strategy and leverage user data to create customized mobile ad campaigns that serve ads that are contextually relevant to the user. 
 Some of the key mobile <keyword id="1959532" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Marketing-trends">marketing trends</keyword> in 2015 would be: 
 
· Shift in eCommerce spends from app installs to SKU-based re-targeting 
The future of eCommerce is M-commerce. When M-commerce was in its nascent stages, eCommerce players majorly ran app install mobile advertising campaigns. We now expect to see eCommerce spends shift from attracting new app users to SKU-based re-targeting, where users are targeted with specific product ads based on their intent. These re-targeted campaigns will provide a contextually-relevant experience and redefine the way consumers discover, shop and pay. 
 
· Conventional brands will start leveraging native ads 
Native Ads, currently a niche advertising format, will soon see widespread adoption by conventional brands. In 2014, we saw a near 100% dominance of App Install ads. However, in 2015, conventional brands will engage with their audience for various marketing objectives like branding affinity, lead generation, purchase intent etc. Marketers will closely emulate and leverage the characteristics of the mobile environment to deliver mobile ads that blend seamlessly with the mobile app and site experience. 
 
· Smart data-driven media buys: Online/mobile-first will scale up 
Today, market segmentation has changed and marketers cannot target customers based on just demographics. The mobile has become the center of the consumer’s universe and his interaction with mobile is generating petabytes of data. This data needs to be analysed and transformed into actionable user personas and intent signals that can help marketers deliver the most relevant ads to consumers. Businesses of tomorrow will run on the simple premise of data, the smarter the data is the sharper the results will be. 
 
· Marketers will see Mobile Display as the new CRM 
Brands will move beyond traditional methods of CRM on mobile such as the SMS or email to meaningfully engage with their customer base. Marketers will see Mobile Display Ads as the new CRM. This will help marketers make better, smarter decisions in real-time, taking relevant mobile messaging to the next-level. This will also offer marketers the ability to connect and communicate with mobile customers throughout the purchase process and across channels. 
 
· Emergence of the new <keyword id="2666980" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Mobile-Media-Currency">Mobile Media Currency</keyword> – Video Ads, Rewards and Re-targeting 
Brands can reap the benefits of successfully implementing integrated mobile experiences as they combine a variety of marketing formats such as video advertising, reward formats and ad re-targeting. Advertisers across industries will be able to retarget consumers based on their historical usage patterns. By incentivising consumers for engaging with a brand campaign, consumers are encouraged to interact with the ads. This integrated approach will emerge as the new mobile media currency for mobile games. 
 
(About the author: The article has been written by Dippak Khurana, Co-Founder and CEO, Vserv)

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Now an advertisement on phone can recharge your DTH

BI India Bureau

Mumbai-based Vserv raises $15 million from Maverick Capital Ventures

BI India Bureau

This Mobile Advertising Network Wants To Get To The Number 1 Spot And Aims To Become A US$100 Million Company By 2015

Sulabh Puri

The Year To Be: A Sneak Peek Into Mobile Advertising Trends For 2015

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