Ybrant Digital is a Hyderabad-based digital marketing solutions company founded by Suresh Reddy and Vijay Kancharla as USAGreetings.com, in September 1999. In November 1999, the company introduced its first eMarketing product 'Powered by USAGreetings' engine and in June 2000, the company metamorphosed into Ybrant Technologies Inc. Suresh Reddy, prior to co-founding two successful companies USAGreetings and Ybrant Technologies, he worked in various roles across different industries in Fortune 500 companies, such as Caterpillar, Chrysler, SBC (PacBell) and Charles Schwab. In an exclusive interview with India Digital Review, Reddy speaks about the digital advertising network market in India and the companies plans going forward.

The digital ad network market was booming two years back and there were a lot of investments happening. But recently there is a disinterest in the market. What exactly are your thoughts on it?

The way we have approached, we have always looked at building a sustainable business; it’s not about what is the next hike. If we look at ten years in a business, hikes come and go. We are looking at what makes sense in respect to what is profitable, what makes sense in executing the plans and what makes sense with respect to our and the entire team’s capability.

There was a whole push towards digital marketing and the thought process then was that there is huge explosion of money being spent on the digital medium. That happened in the US, in Europe going to spread in India. It is going to be routed through local network and that didn’t happen to the extent of the expectation and that’s the reason probably some disinterest in the market presently.

Now there is hope that commerce is going to get conducted online. If you talk about private equity money, you never know what will actually happen and one needs to put money in the right company that will grow and that’s the approach. Fundamentals of the business are right but whether we are overvaluing it or undervaluing it, it’s not my headache. Rather it’s the headache of the investor, I am sure they know what they are doing. The business itself is there to grow, is there to do good job, whether you are a content player or in ecommerce, you keep your fundamentals right and go after the business, you will make money.

Ybrant has grown on acquisitions and you chose an inorganic path of growth. Any specific reasons behind that and what are your plans going forward?

Looking back from where we started, there was whole madness in the Bay Area about any dot com business. We have a very strong DNA of technology. We were a technology company providing services for advertisers and publishers. There were two ways of growing: one was go and learn how do it, but we were afraid to take that route and hence the best way out was to find somebody who was good enough to carry that plan. If you see our management structure today lot of the people who are running the core area of the business, have come from acquisitions. What we have done very well is we have connected different companies into one single core group, and we believe that more money is going to be spent on this. We focussed entirely on the monetisation part and stayed away from doing anything else.

You mean you acquired team rather than the product?

We acquired the business, we acquired relationship. Through our acquisition in South America, we got the relationship with Microsoft. Our entire Facebook expansion across the world has been through that one route, so relationship is what we acquired. However, there also has been organic growth, which I don’t want to miss out on.

A digital ad network company is out and out a technology firm. So is it imperative for the company to build a product or focus on building an excellent sales team that can run around and bring business?

Ad network is a bad word today. I would say that anything that is intermediary doesn’t have to be an out and out technology firm. It’s about relevant advertising. If somebody today is interested in buying this phone, and I want to give him an ad for that, I need to understand, where the individual is? What is he buying? What is his behaviour? And that can be enabled through technology and I can have more data of that individual. It doesn’t matter how good your technology is. The scale is achieved through relationships, physical presence is various countries and all these are very critical so these are some parts you cannot isolate one thing.

Being at the helm of affairs at Ybrant, what are your priorities in 2012?

We announced the technology merger with LGS Global. We believe it is time to enhance technology. We want to be very successful in integrating the backend and in coming up with products which can make this job of connecting the advertiser and the publisher easy.

We are looking at markets like China and we are also looking at South America, Thailand some other markets.  We want to leave Korea and Japan for the next year. Then we want to follow the track of mobile marketing which is continuing to grow and again you are just following where the user is going. Yes there are challenges and it is not the end. There is a way to go from my mobile to my laptop, to my TV. Technology is very important and the ability to walk your ad through different touch points are the things that we are looking at.  

From acquisition point of view, any merger or acquisition plans?

We are looking at one large acquisition this year. We are set to acquire a US-based online services firm which would integrate online comparison shopping and other online services to our portfolio and we are quite excited about that.

You talked about mobile, these days the trend is about videos and apps. These are the two new forms of content that has come up. What are your plans for this?

We are already on mobile. We are in-app advertising and an app, at the end of the day, is a specialised browser. So there is no difference in running ads.

Video is globally taking off, there is lot of discussion of convergence between TV and digital media and how that is going to play. There is a mindset issue with respect to the money people are spending. To shift consumers from one medium to other is not going to be an easy sail, but that shift is happening.

How do you see Indian online publishing growing and providing avenues to brands where they can visually market their products?

We are talking to our publishing partners and we understand that they are coming up with incredible things. Some of the larger players of the market are talking about experiences based on your behaviour, then what happens is your process of creation of the content or the advertisement as a brand is long term. Today it is very short term and people want clicks and page views. It’s an evolution and it will take few years to progress. But, the good news is there is lot of interest and it is fundamentally driven by what consumers want.

When you go to traditional marketers and talk to them about digital, they say yes we do digital and we are on Facebook, so social is just like an excuse. How do you see it?

We have broader perspective to marketing. Yes you can have Facebook presence but then you need to have people to your page and then you should actively engage in what consumers are doing on Facebook. People are enhancing products based on feedback that you get on social media and at the end of day that is what marketing is supposed to do. You have to have ways of getting information and see what people are talking about your products and get them to talk back about your products. It actually helps the advertiser in selling the product to come back to use that and enhance the product.

As you said performance is leader in digital marketing spends, what are your views on what kind of brand are spending on display?

Well we just had a speaker form Pepsi today and that tells a lot (in Ad:Tech New Delhi 2012).  We are talking about 2012 being explosion for branding, but you never know. We have to see how this can be done and we have to wait and watch.

Have the internet industry made it tough for marketers to understand the measurement metrics of this medium?

It is about education. When an agency comes up with a TV ad, the marketer is convinced that this is going to work, as there are no options. That’s the way it is done in traditional media. On digital, we give you 90 options and think that one of them will work. We have to get the people to go out there and educate the corporates.

How do you see the percentage share of digital marketing growing in India?

It’s still really small, I don’t know the exact number, but my sense is about 1 to 2 per cent and it’s an experimental stage, but thanks to Facebook and entire buzz around it. It is beginning to hit through their children to the marketers. So, some of these have actually started to push the top class towards the social media and I think there is no going back. Another big push will be convergence of TV and videos on internet.

Compiled by Abhay Anand