Adgully Exclusive | Our focus is on emerging markets: Vserv's Dippak Khurana

According to Gartner, worldwide mobile apps industry is expected to be $21.6 Billion by 2013. Application stores like iStore and Ovi see up to 10 million downloads a day.

According to market analyst firm IDC, by 2015, mobile application downloads are estimated to touch 183 billion.

As per Distimo, the website which collects public application data from app stores, in 2011 the proportion of free applications surged significantly in all app stores clearly indicating that free apps are garnering greater importance than paid ones.

It wouldn't be wrong to say that the mobile users are spending more time in mobile apps than mobile web browsing, widening a gap that began for the first time last summer.

Pioneering the business network on mobile is Vserv. A leading global mobile ad network, Vserv is a company, which has grown from just two founders to a strong global team serving best of the clients.

Since its inception in January 2010, Vserv has delivered In-App & WAP advertising for leading Fortune 500 brands & digital media companies in over 200 countries.

Their flagship product known as AppWrapper, provides the world's simplest mobile ad integration technology and does not require access to the source code of the apps.

Hence, everytime the developer doesn't have to open the file, integrate the code and do a quality check. This is important for developers because there are multiple versions of J2ME and Android. In case of competitors, the developer has to open the app and integrate the ad code in to the app which is quite cumbersome. Thus, AppWrapper enables mobile app developers to monetize their apps with minimal effort.

Adgully caught up with Dippak Khurana, Co-founder, Vserv Digital Services, who shared with us insights about Vserv and the challenges that they face in the market.

At Vserv, Khurana is responsible for the company's overall vision, strategy and execution. He belongs to the domain of Internet & Mobile industry and has successfully played key roles in launching India's first online newspaper in 1996, India's first Online Ad Network in 1999, India's first SMS Shortcode in 2001 and pioneered many services on Mobile Internet since then.

Facing challenges up front, Vserv has now become a full-fledged butterfly, which has spread out of its cocoon. "When we started Vserv, the challenge that we faced was unpredictability as a start-up, and after that we faced execution challenge," says Khurana.

"The domain that we had ventured into was a known area for us. And this known factor was that we were dealing in mobile internet. Within that, we knew mobile applications would have a large play within the next 2-3 years." he added.

However, like any other start up networks, Vserv took time to build up. But over a span of two-three years they have now established themselves well enough.

"It's important to start at the right time. With time everything is getting solved, two years back, a lot of evangelisation was required and the same goes for the year before. Today, we can safely say that more customers are interested in us now than they were two years back," says Khurana.

With the mobile App domain growing at a fast pace, its natural that mobile Internet usage is bound to increase.

"Today, India has close to 100 million mobile internet users which is expected to cross 250-300 million in the next three years. Thus, any organisation in this category will continue to grow at a similar pace. As a company, we set our goal to grow faster than the market," explains Khurana.

Not surprisingly, Vserv moves according to the set benchmark. "Say, if the market is growing by 100 percent every year in terms of user base, then we target to grow 200 percent every year. This has been Vserv's goal and we have been executing this in the same manner," says Khurana.

"If you see markets like Indonesia with 30-35 million Internet mobile users and South-East Asia region which has about 50-60 million Internet mobile users, and compare that to India's 100 million users. India as a region leads the emerging markets" says Khurana.

So what makes Vserv standout from its competitors?

"The key things that makes Vserv different from other players on the same domain is that we focus on emerging markets. The products of Vserv are made to cater the needs of the emerging markets. Our products focus on feature and smart phones," Khurana says.

Today, mobile advertisement has become a big thing. One can see lots of display as well as video advertisements and one can expect it to increase in the years to come.

If a small app developer can make good revenue and run a profitable business, he creates more innovative content. Innovations can get killed if it is not compensated on time. says Khurana.

He further adds, "When an app developer uses our technology, he uses it because of our product differentiators and business model of our services which generates ad revenue. We have a unique product called AppWrapper which enables global monetization for developers from day 1. Online Ad networks don't have a unique product ' they work on relationships, hence they are service companies. The difference between the mobile ecosystem and the online ecosystem is the barrier of technology."

Every brand has a mobile application ' they wanted solution and a business model that are free run campaigns (click to app download programs). Thus they only pay as per successful app downloads. Thus, we created a solution to provide successful app download and then developed a business model which gave the option to pay per download and not as per click.

Vserv cater to all categories of clients and believes that mobile is the next mass medium. It will also cater to local advertisers. We not only deal with National advertisers, but also with advertisers looking to advertise state wise / city wise, etc. We will soon also start running local ads.

"We believe that mobile is the next mass medium and at the same time we say mobile also cater to local advertising. Bombay and Delhi is the biggest advertising market in India and clients invest a lot there" commented, Khurana.

With premium App Inventory on both feature phones and smart phones, Vserv offer unparalleled reach to a wide demographic. Vserv has worked with 110 brands in the country such as Axe, Colgate, Lufthansa Airlines, Close Up, Reebok, Nike, Vodafone, Airtel, Bausch & Lomb, Singapore Tourism, Tata Photon, Tata Docomo, HDFC Bank Yahoo!, Idea and others for mobile in-app advertising.

Vserv is looking forward to play a pivotal role in increasing its relevance and utility for consumers, marketers, content creators and developers.