Communicate2 scouting for acquisitions

PUNE, INDIA: Search marketing firm Communicate2 is on its way to close some acquisitions in the SMB space. The possible candidates for the same would be from the US or UK and the deals might materialize in the next six months.

"SMBs will be our next phase of growth. We have started tapping it already with local customers in Mumbai and Pune. Talks are on and these acquisitions will add to our capabilities for attacking the SMB market," told Vivek Bhargava, managing director, Communicate2.

The company might take the help of internal funding with existing partners like Enaam Securities for the acquisitions.

While the company that generates online leads in tie-up with search engines like Google, is firmly entrenched in the financial vertical with clients like ICICI Bank, Tata AIG etc, it is now looking at upping its action in the travel vertical this year. "We already have customers like Kingfisher, SOTC and plan to rope in three big travel companies this year," explained Bhargava. This includes the likes of Raj Travels, GoAir and MakeMyTrip for which a pilot is already underway.

The next category to follow on his radar would be education. "We will grow step by step conquering one vertical at a time."

Communicate2 claims to be media and engine agnostic and works on Google, MSN and Yahoo alike. It is working on GooglePrint and some new platforms to make advertising more dynamic and bidding-based in nature.

For MSN, it has worked on Adcentre, a demographic-based search engine. Future pipeline for the company includes new tools on campaign quality improviser, automatic keyword creation, instant ad copy writing, keyword-based campaign creation etc.

"We are also building a keyword warehouse. Another exciting new piece is an Interface for Online Reputation Management that tracks sentiment survey and content that is placed anywhere (blogs, websites, mails) for a company online," Bhargava said.

The company, which is operating out of a 125 people team spread between Pune and Mumbai, will be adding 60 heads in the next six months and plans to touch 1000 people in two to three years.

Bhargava sums up his plans with the aim of being the number one player in the Indian Net market which as per some estimates stands at Rs 210 crore in 06-07 and can leap up to Rs 2250 crore by 08-09.

"From the perspective of the search marketing slice, which is our forte, it would be worth Rs 1000 crore. Of the total online market worldwide of $25 billion, search comprises about $14 billion globally."