SinglePoint has acquired M2Junction, a Hyderabad-headquartered SMS/mobile advertising platform, for an undisclosed sum, marking its entry into the Indian mobile advertising market. Effective immediately, M2Junction founder-chairman Dayakar Puskoor will join the US-based mobile messaging company’s board as a strategic advisor and help guide the latter’s strategy for the Indian market.
“India is the fastest growing SMS market in the world with an incredible mobile advertising opportunity, We want to be a part of this growth and revolutionise the Indian industry with our offerings,” Gowri Shanakar, SinglePoint president and chief executive, told mediapersons here on Thursday.
SinglePoint will be offering in India its ad marketplace solutions called ‘SingleBrand’, a web-based transactional platform for delivering contextual mobile advertising, ranging from pure brand messages to interactive options such as click-to-wap, click-to-call and click-to-coupon, inserted into the SMS message and targeted to the desired consumer demographic.
“The mobile advertising industry is growing at a fast pace and is expected to reach $28 billion globally by 2013, from the present $3 billion. India, where SMS is ubiquitous and a primary driver of value-added services revenues, is one of the top countries leading this growth with more than 525 million mobile users. We see a tremendous potential in India and are launching SingleBrand to monetise this opportunity,” he said.
SinglePoint, which had raised $45 million (approximately Rs 207 crore), has already initiated talks with all the major advertising agencies in India, Shankar said, adding the company was targetting to deliver more than 25 per cent of the mobile advertising opportunities in India in the first year of operations. “We will absorb all the 13 employees of the over $1-million M2Junction and will ramp up the number to 50 by the end of this year to support our US and Hyderabad operations.”
Meanwhile, SinglePoint has sold its strategic operator and aggregation contract assets business, which contributes 50 per cent to its overall revenues, to technology and services provider to telecom operators – Ericsson. “The proceeds will be utilised to develop our text messaging business,” Shankar said.