In tune with its expansion plans, ad network Ozone Media Solutions Pvt. Ltd will take both the organic and inorganic route to cover ground faster and will be investing significantly in growing its reach and offerings.
Kiran Gopinath, CEO and Founder,Ozone Media Solutions Pvt. Ltd, told VCCircle, "We are looking at acquisitions largely in terms of technology but are also open to companies which have market access. We are looking at a breadth of companies - from garage operations to those which have achieved traction."
Established in 2006, Ozone Media Solutions Pvt. Ltd is backed by IDG Ventures, which invested an undisclosed sum in 2008. Gopinath says the company is in a comfortable financial position owing to careful management of finances over the past two years and now is in an investment mode to expand internationally. Ozone's target markets are USA, UK, Canada, few countries in Europe and S.E.Asia. It is also open to acquiring or merging with Indian firms.
Headquartered in Bangalore, the company has offices in Mumbai, New Delhi and New Jersey. It currently employs 50 and will add another 50 over the next year towards branch sales expansion. "We are scaling up the team on brands, beefing up on technology and sales. We have already added few upper management hires and are looking at adding a few more," said Gopinath.
After appointing Yuzdi Badhniwalla as Vice President last year, the company recently roped in ex-Reliance MediaWorks executive Ajay Bansiwal as Senior Vice President to drive business in USA, North America and the UK region.
On attrition in his company and the industry, Gopinath said, "I think the team today is strong and attrition is low. In the industry too, attrition is low since ad network is a relatively new animal in the Internet space. Strangely competition and attrition are not related - we don't poach. We have never poached from Komli and they have not poached a single employee of ours. There is no pressure from other ad networks."
Ozone Media Solutions Pvt. Ltd currently offers an advertisement network and also produces Ozone Media Performance Users Study (OPUS) reports on trends in the Indian Internet market. It competes with Komli, VDopia, Sulekha, Tyroo, Media Estate, IndiAds and AdsForIndians and claims to be in the top 3. Rival Komli Media India raised $15 million in a round led by Norwest Venture Partners.
It has an active publisher base of 1000 of its total base of 3500 publishers. Its clients include HSBC, SBI, ICICI, Yahoo!, Dell, NDTVjobs, Lenovo, Cleartrip, In.com, Britannia, Huggies, Virgin Mobile, Timesjobs.com, SimplyMarry.com, Zapak, Makemytrip and Citibank. It plans to supplement its ad network with technology that will "enhance the efficiency of advertisements on networks," according to Gopinath. The company will acquire to improve business intelligence and analytics of its network.
Its OPUS reports are based on data from Indian Internet users. The company currently reaches 35% of Internet users in India and is targeting a reach of 70% in the next six months. It will also be expanded to cover south Asia in keeping with rising demand.