mGinger high on mobile ads - CIOL News Reports

mGinger high on mobile ads

Plans to set up office in Delhi; targeting five million users by this year-end

Dheeksha Rabindra

Friday, March 28, 2008

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BANGALORE, INDIA: Bangalore-based mGinger, which was started with a novel concept of providing targeted advertisements on mobile phones a year ago, has churned out 11 lakh users and is targeting to increase it to five million users by 2008 year-end.

Mginger, with its sales offices in Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad, is also planning to set up its office in Delhi very soon, said Chaitaya Nallan, CEO of Gingersoft Media Pvt Ltd.

"Since the day we started, the adoption from the consumer/user front was very quick and we have users across India. Of course most of the user base is concentrated in the five metros. Even today we have over 5000 users on an average per day," said Nallan.

To expand to other cities, the company has come up with a franchise model.

"We have already set up 35 franchises in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. We are looking at getting this rather new concept operational. This is the model we are going to follow in the future to expand to tier-two and three cities," said Nallan.

Speaking about the adoption of the concept by advertisers, he said: "We have signed up with 122 advertisers and have done over 650 campaigns. Over 80 per cent of the advertisements are repeats. They advertise once on a pilot and if they get good response the advertisers go for it regularly."

"Advertisers are reaping very high ROIs and have received high response rates from most of the campaigns," Nallan added.

Talking about revenue and investments, he said that mGinger has done about seven million ads in last two quarter.

Advertisers are the main source of revenue. Mobile as an advertising medium is new. For such new concepts, it takes some time to breakeven.

"We received the first round of funding of $4 million in October 2007 from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and NEA-IndoUS Ventures. We have been approached for second round of funding and we have to take a call on that," he said.

With a huge database in its kitty, mGinger is also planning to involve them into a networking site.

"Consumer adoption is fast and mobile is a good medium to reach people. We have reached the advertisers. Now our focus has moved to the consumers. We are targeting five million users."

"This is our first goal and the second is the engagements. How do I engage the users other than advertisements and build a network around. We are planning to build a social network portal to engage our users," Nallan stated.

"We are also planning whole bunch of new innovative mobile-based consumer-oriented products." But, he declined to provide those product details.

How it works?

After registration, the users have the flexibility to choose number of ads s/he can receive. Consumers get paid 20 paise for every ad they receive.

"It is just a fun factor that is attached to it. Once one makes minimum of Rs 300, they receive a cheque from us. There are users who have made Rs 5000 from us," Nallan informed.

The user can choose a convenient time to receive ads and can select categories of interest too.

Currently, mGinger provides for 76 categories like real estate, healthcare, shopping malls, events in the city, restaurants, movies and many others.

The user will get ads only related to the selected interest. "Further we have huge database. We have to match the advertiser and the user," Nallan added.

©CyberMedia News

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