Telecom major Bharti Airtel has acquired a stake in Singapore headquartered blockchain-based digital marketing company Aqilliz.
Aqilliz provides a blockchain platform called Atom, which allows brands to create solutions to engage with customers in order to show them relevant content through a distributed digital ledger.
The company provides middleware technology meant to build a collaborative digital marketing ecosystem that is interoperable for all its players. The company claims that enterprises can perform advanced analytics on top of the platform, while preserving the privacy of user data. Being based on distributed ledgers, all participants are required to trust each other, share data and unify proprietary technologies. This in turn is expected to help the ecosystem with better insights in real-time, and for more efficient marketing.
“Blockchain technology is maturing and we see its application across areas such as adtech, creator economy, and loyalty programmes,” said Adarsh Nair, CEO – Airtel Digital.
Airtel will deploy Aqilliz’s blockchain technology into its adtech domains through Airtel Ads; digital entertainment platform Wynk Music and Airtel Xstream, and the Airtel Thanks App, which is the gateway to the company’s online payment bank used for recharges and claiming rewards.
“Legacy customer engagement, ad tech and marketing technologies are built for centralised databases. The future of the digital economy is already pivoting to managing value exchanges between brands, platforms and the consumer,” explained Gowthaman Ragothaman, Founding CEO – Aqilliz.
“Aqilliz will enable Airtel to capture and carry this value exchange in the form of consent and provenance across the digital supply chain,” he added.
The acquisition is part of Airtel’s Startup Accelerator Programme, through which the company invests in early-stage startups. The company had also launched its India Startup Innovation Challenge in December last year in partnership with the government’s investment promotion agency, Invest India. Airtel invites companies who could demonstrate solutions in 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), and other advanced technologies.
