AgTalk | All set for one large acquisition on content side: Ybrant Digital's Suresh Reddy

"E-commerce, in India, is a huge buzz and we need to feed it properly. We believe that in the Asian mind-set, be it India or China, it's about shopping. Here shopping is not about buying, shopping is actually shopping," is how Suresh Reddy, Founder, Chairman and the CEO, Ybrant Digital, analyzes the way the market is heading.

Today, when the economy is hit by slowdown, Ybrant Digital is slowly moving up the ladder in the digital world with its enormous reach, cross platform capabilities, and technology.

Ybrant Digital connects advertisers with their audience across any form of digital media, using extensive local presence to deliver appropriate messages to the right audience, through the most relevant digital channels.

Besides proprietary media such as Lycos, Gamesville, getMedia in Latin America and several travel websites in Australasia, Ybrant Digital partners with global publishers such as Facebook, Google, MSN, Yahoo!, and Viacom, and assists over 140 top Ad Agencies including OMD, Carat, MediaCom, Group M, Quasar, Razorfish, Mindshare, Maxus, OmniCom and Oglivy, across Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Founded in 2000 and headquartered in India, Ybrant Digital holds offices in 16 countries, including US, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Ukraine, Serbia, Israel, China, India, and Australia, and with representatives or partners in Spain, Greece and Netherlands.

In a candid interaction with Adgully, Reddy shed light on the new trends in the domain and their plans for 2012.

Adgully (AG): Share with us the core competencies of Ybrant Digital?

Suresh Reddy (SR): We are a global digital market which provides opportunities to advertisers. Being strong in platforms such as mobile, affiliated marketing and digital, we are a global market. India is a new market that we are trying to develop now. We are already there in 20 countries, with strong market in South America and now we are trying to develop that in Asia.

AG: What are the key marketing sectors that you are trying to focus on?

SR: We want to develop ourselves in China, in South America and Brazil we have been placed strongly. The next thing that we are looking at is, starting something in Thailand, Asia and in South Africa. May be next year we would be starting in Korea, Japan. India is the biggest market on which we are focusing.

AG: How Ybrant Digital is placed in India?

SR: Primarily, we are in Hyderabad and our sales offices are in ' Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi. We have team strength of about 1200 million across the world. Half of the team them takes care of the technical and rest of them are distributed between front in sales, publisher recruitment and traffic management.

AG: Share with us the key trends that you have noticed in you domain?

SR: One of the trends is the usage of digital media and its growth rate is high in emerging market in compare to established market such as US. Before when you used to spend 8% it would grow up to 12%, but now in the new market the usage is growing and with it even money spent on it is growing, here understanding the whole system is the essential part. For example, mobile phones, internet through mobile phones and social media are some of these stuffs. We are quite strong in social media, as we are one of the strongest partners with Facebook, and the largest advertisers for Facebook concise of the US, that is how we have grown in the last three years. So, Social media is another trend. Then comes TV and digital and how they have come into focus which has begun to generate loads of interest for developed market that which would be eventually followed by other markets.

AG: How YbrantDigital looking at capitalising the mobile?

SR: From past, there have been a lot of talks on mobiles. We already have Ybrant mobiles and we work with Apps, and within those Apps we have Apps and an App is nothing but a specialized browser. There is no difference between Apps and browser but when you use a browser for a specific purpose, it becomes an App. So, that explosion of loads of Apps been created and our publishers like Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo and Google are strong for that matter. They all have Apps that's been used online and in App advertising the mobile plays important part. But more importantly, instead of measuring the clicks and conversions, the mind-set is moving towards the stronger engagement with the audience. In the market today, relationships are starting at a very early stage, in content development space.

Some of the stronger players who have control over operations are trying to embed Apps over that directly. So, there are things that are happening that can change the Apps scale. As of today yes, CPM, CPS and CPC are there but few years down the road the whole way to measure effective campaign and effective advertising will change. It's all based on engagement and building that engagement over time. How the brand is been build and how it's impacting sales. ROI is a long- term and this is short 'term which is fine.

AG: How was the year2011 for Ybrant Digital?

SR: For us, in terms of social media, Facebook, Linked In and other sites have been the big areas in 2011. Geographically, Latin America showed great results whereas Europe was affected because of slowdown period.

AG: As you mentioned, last year was a slowdown period and people are considering even 2012as slowdown period. Where are you looking yourself in this situation?

SR: See, if you look at the market and the way it is growing irrespective of 2008 which was also a slowdown period, and respective of money spent towards digital market has been the same. Within the money spent for digital marketing there is a portion which goes for brand advertising and a portion which goes for performance. And that distribution shifts due to slower year and more money is spent on the market. But neck to neck there is a consistent growth in terms of allocation of funds towards this space and it will continue to grow.

AG: How you are looking forward to the year 2012?

SR: According to our perspective, in the last 5 years we used to be backend technology providers, building platforms to facilitate things that have happened. And in these5 years, we have moved from backend to the frontend. We've been connecting to advertisers, publishers directly. We are working with advertising agencies, large publishers, and small publishers and to do that we have done in both the way organic and inorganic. We bought approximately 8 companies in last 5 years and we are working very effectively in taking different geography, different culture and integrate that in one company and we are very happy to do that.

Now, we see the shifting data and we are shifting our whole mind-sets with the platforms towards the backend that we have, as it needs to be upgraded. So, to facilitate that we joined hands with Indian companies too as they have expertise on data and apps. So, this year our big emphasis would be on building this backend and getting it stronger with the data and integrate this into acquisition.

AG: Are you lookingat any acquisition this year ahead?

SR: We are looking at one large acquisition on content side fundamentally comparison shopping side of a business.

AG: What kind of potential you see in this acquisition?

SR: In India, E-commerce is a huge buzz and we need to feed it properly. Coming to our own business growth, we believe that the Asian mind-set, be it India or China it's about shopping. Here shopping is not about buying, shopping is actually shopping. If we compare A-B or C, as a customer we always observe place where we can come back or who is going to give me the best price and feature and for us this is the biggest growth that we see. So, we are trying to figure a player who is successful in the US market, from where we can take some of the methodologies idea, which would be applied in the local mind-set and combine digital. We would be applying this in other markets such as Brazil or Argentina and will gradually bring it back. We are not in hurry to enter in this space but that's the area which we believe is very critical to the full mix of offerings for the advertisers and for the clients.

AG: Funding is the key area for running the business. Are you looking ahead to get more funds and who all are your investors?

SR: Yes, fundamentally we've been always profitable; we are one of the largest companies in India doing this business from last 10 years. We always keep ourselves profitable, using the money and losing the money. But our acquisitions have been funded, we raised about 100 million dollars almost 80% of equity and 20%of debts. This trend will continue and we will be looking for funding to facilitate the next.

We have oak investments, large mutual funds, Asia Pacific Capital, Hong Kong and many more as we have list of 40-48 investors. So far, we have raised about 100 million dollars.