We are very excited about the entrepreneurial trading mentality of Indians: Astus

Found in London in 2003, Astus Group, a global media trading company, has announced the official launch of its independent office in India. The media trading company has appointed Sparsh Ganguli, who joins as India Head. Ganguli has over 25 years of experience working for agencies and media houses, including Star, Sony, BAG Films, among others.

Astus has its presence in 20 countries with over 300 clients and trades over $400 million annually. They work closely with advertisers to enhance their media budget using their products or services. Astus work across FMCG, Airlines, Automotive, Telecoms, Tourism, Food & Beverage, Hotels, Events/ Hospitality, Electronic Goods, Entertainment, Education and Charities.

In conversation with Adgully, Sparsh Ganguli, India Head, Astus Media; Frances Dickens OBE, Joint-Chairperson and Co-Founder, Astus Group; and Paul Jackson, Joint-Chairman and Co-Founder, Astus Group, speak at length about Astus plans for India, their unique business model, and more.

Please tell us about your business model for India?

Sparsh Ganguli: Almost all brands that are advertising form our clientele. We invest in certain media, which become our media inventory. We approach client or agencies to explore opportunities to trade media through them, wherein they buy certain media through us. Some clients use it for selling their products, some may use it for buying traditional media, while some may use it for various marketing activities. This is a simple form of our business – we invest in media, we buy the inventory, out of that inventory, the client uses certain inventory. We get a value out of it, which we give back to the client, who uses the value for various purposes. When they give products for it, for those products we do remarketing. We need to sell it to somebody else, so we have a ‘Remarketing Director’, who is an expert sitting in London. He takes care of that. He understands the product and finds a home for that. That, in short, is our business model.

Paul Jackson: It is important to clarify here that we are not a media agency; we are not going to plan and buy the media for the client. We still rely on GroupM, Omnicom, Dentsu, Publicis, Havas. So, even if we are working on the same clients together, they put the communication processes together, they do all the planning and buying, and set the rates. What we do is we talk to the client beforehand to make sure whether they want to do a deal, reinvest to buy other media. We work with the media agency to make sure that we can overlay our deals on their media plan. It is essentially a financial process, wherein we allow our clients to power play their media using their product. In terms of delivering it, it has to be done on a media plan, and it is done with the agency. So, we work closely with the agencies, we build in an admin fee for the agencies. They will get a percentage fee from us, that’s their incentive and the client obviously gets to pay for their media using soft currency. So, there is cash value to it, also there is a problem solving aspect to our business.

How has Astus as a group evolved since its inception 2003? What have been some key milestones?

Paul Jackson: We broke even in the first year. We changed the way business model was being done, to make it very accountable and transparent. We came up with the slogan, “Delivering on all our promises”, so we have 90% of repeat businesses. From 2003, we broke even and doubled down on our revenue the next year, year after year and we have pretty much became the only people that anyone wanted to deal with in the UK. Our competitors then changed their mottos to match ours. For me, that was one of the biggest milestones when our competitors changed their websites entirely, by then we had overtaken them. Another big milestone was 2010, when we forayed into Asia and did a joint venture with GroupM across the whole of APAC region. In all of the other markets as well as in Asia, we are independent, which means we can work without Publicis, Havas, and we really want to do that in India as well. But we are still partners with GroupM, even though we are not in a joint venture with them.

What are the unique opportunities and challenges currently in a market like India?

Paul Jackson: I think the opportunities are similar. For me, one of the unique things about India is that everyone is very entrepreneurial. All of the meetings that I had the privilege to go to, I had great conversations with the clients, where I realised the entrepreneurial trading mentality of Indians. That has really excited us as there is a huge opportunity for our business. Because we get the right people at the right place and at the right time and funded properly.

Frances Dickens: We have learnt over the last four years with Sparsh, that there is demand for such offering. It is about the entrepreneurial spirit that you encounter when you are talking to people and I think that’s going to make India really significant.