In 2010, two enterprising students from Thakur College, Tejas Rathod and Kunal Kothari, embarked on a mission to revolutionise the advertising landscape through technology. With $100, that they earned from freelancing gigs, they laid the foundation for a small digital marketing agency. Fast forward to 2017, their ambition led to the birth of Mobavenue—a company that has since emerged as a significant player in the Madtech (Adtech and Martech) arena. Joining them on this dynamic journey was Ishank Joshi, a seasoned industry professional with prior leadership experience at Goals101 and BidTech.
Mobavenue has carved a niche for itself by offering cutting-edge Madtech solutions, designed to help brands, agencies, and publishers to drive acquisition, growth, engagement, and monetisation. Their innovative approach has attracted an impressive clientele, including HDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, TataNeu, Phonepe, Nykaa, and Zepto, among others. From its modest beginnings, Mobavenue has expanded its footprint into a global enterprise, boasting a team of over 150 employees spread across 10 locations, including major hubs like Delhi, Mumbai, Singapore, and New York. The company’s growth trajectory remains upward, with plans to establish seven more offices within the next 1,000 days.
What sets Mobavenue apart is its consistent profitability since inception, a rare feat in the competitive world of digital marketing. The company has exhibited a remarkable 49% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), a testament to its robust business model and visionary leadership. In just seven years, Mobavenue is already eyeing to surpass the $100 million revenue mark, underscoring its rapid ascent in the industry.
Despite these impressive milestones, the founders and core team at Mobavenue remain as driven as ever, constantly striving for greater achievements. Their suite of technological products, including SurgeX DSP, ResurgeX, and AudX, continues to push the boundaries of digital transformation and contextual advertising. What makes their offerings even more compelling is their ability to provide solutions across the entire marketing funnel, ensuring comprehensive support for their clients.
In a relatively big office sitting in Mumbai, which is covered with light and bright colours, Kunal, Tejas and Ishank talk about the story of Mobavenue, and how they aspire to fill more colours in the space of Madtech.
Q&A
‘We have been profitable since 2017’
Mobavenue’s founders– Chief Operating Officer, Tejas Rathod, Chief Growth Officer, Kunal Kothari, and Chief Executive Officer, Ishank Joshi, speak to IMPACT about their products, competition and expansion plans.
Q] You started with limited resources, and today you are one of the major players in the MadTech space. How has this journey been?
Tejas: Like many businesses, we too started with limited resources; and being a bootstrapped startup, we had to manage everything on our own. While we were struggling, and wearing multiple hats, we figured out how to scale up the business quickly. Our customer-first approach, product-led solutions, and the act of doing everything in house brought us fast-paced growth in a short span of time. So now being pioneers in the madtech space, we have more opportunities to grow in India, and across the globe.
Ishank: Thanks to our customers, who have helped us to reach this stage. It would have been impossible without their kind support to achieve this, and to go from building an agency to building a product.
Kunal: We still have a long way to go, and a lot awaits us.
Q] You support brands, agencies, and publishers with your MadTech solutions that help in acquisitions, monetisation, growth and engagement. Could you elaborate on your products and services?
Ishank: When we started, we were only providing solutions around growth. In the last five years of our journey, however, what we have started doing is– building a new product each year. Mobavenue 2.0 is now a fully unified solution. It addresses the top of the funnel for advertisers, helping them reach high-intent audiences, and then the lower funnel, for whom we drive performance. Whether it’s adding new customers, or improving sales or bringing ROAs, we provide various solutions. Helping our supply partners with better yields is a critical part of our journey. While on one side, we are supporting advertisers to find high intent audiences; on the other side, we are trying to help our supply partners get better deals. All of this is possible because we follow a platform approach. That’s what we typically do today, and we are still learning.
Q] You have a very solid roster of clients, and you have partnered with the likes of Myntra and Zepto. Could you name your other major clients and the solutions you’ve provided them?
Ishank: We have clients across multiple categories, starting from E-commerce to BFSI to real money. We keep evaluating which categories require growth and take on a digital-first approach. Currently, categories like BFSI are getting aggressive in terms of acquiring customers and digital usage, and our solutions cater to their needs. Hence, we have been helping the likes of HDFC Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank.
Kunal: Till date, our approach has been solution-led. Irrespective of the category, we have tried to provide solutions based on our clients’ needs, whether it is driving growth, re-engagement, or retargeting. We offer a different set of solutions for each client.
Q] You’ve discussed the various solutions and products you offer. Which of these is currently driving the most business for you?
Ishank: Our core industry product, SurgeX DSP, is a demand-side solution that we launched in 2022. We named it ‘Surge’ to symbolise growth, which is exactly what this product represents. Currently, SurgeX DSP generates around 60% of our revenue. Although it’s only in its second year of revenue generation, we generally see that it takes about three years for a product to mature and establish a consistent customer base. As SurgeX DSP and our other products move toward maturity, they are reaching the next level of growth and helping us secure repeat customers.
Q] And when it comes to your clients, where are you seeing most growth from?
Tejas: We are heavily betting on the BFSI category at this moment. With our per capita income and spending power rising, banks and fintech companies are helping the Indian ecosystem financially. Going forward, BFSI will be the backbone of this fast-growing economy. India is among the top digital spenders and BFSI is a core sector where the digital growth is as rapid.
Ishank: The second segment where we have been building a lot is gaming. India is still in its early stages when it comes to gaming, but there is strong growth. Globally, around 80% of revenue from Google Play and the App Store comes from large gaming companies. For our global expansion, this is the segment we are targeting. We have been working with global companies and publishers with the aim of scaling it up further.
Q] Programmatic, over the years, has been celebrated a lot. And while we celebrate it, there are very few people who actually understand the intricacies of it. So, what is your sauce? How are you navigating the world of programmatic?
Tejas: Programmatic advertising is complex, but our tech background as computer engineers gives us a competitive edge in navigating it. We understand the intricacies of ad requests, targeting, and timing, which allows us to succeed where many struggle. With few competitors in this space, we’re uniquely positioned to teach and support others, especially as brands seek alternatives to Google and Facebook. As a Bharat-first company, we’re excited to offer these solutions both locally and globally.
Ishank: In the last two years, we’ve invested heavily in machine learning, giving us a strong edge in brand performance. While most demand-side products in India focus on brand awareness, we’re delving deeper into engagement metrics like completed views, clicks, actions, and sales. It’s a complex but rewarding endeavour, with few in the world aiming for this level of integration.
Kunal: We guide our clients through their entire growth journey, from branding and user acquisition to re-engagement and repeat purchases, ensuring high engagement and achieving their overall goals.
Q] Who all do you consider your biggest competitors, in India as well as internationally?
Ishank: We’ve always looked up to companies like InMobi and admired how their founding team built the business. It is amazing that today, we’re competing with them and aiming to reach the level of global players like AppLovin, IronSource, Unity, and Moloco, who are solving similar challenges at scale.
Tejas: But, of course, our ultimate competitors will always be giants like Google and Facebook.
Q] The MadTech space keeps evolving each day. Any novel feature or unique upgrade that you want to talk about?
Tejas: When iOS introduced its privacy features, it created a new attribution challenge, which we solved with our SurgeX DSP. Our DSP stands among the fastest systems globally, with an internal response time of just 4-5 milliseconds. This speed, combined with our agile, customer-first approach, gives us a competitive edge.
Q] We were walking away from the third-party cookie system and now it seems that they are here to stay for longer. Considering privacy in mind, how are you approaching this update?
Ishank: We were initially glad when Google announced its shift towards a privacy-first, cookie-less world, as it promised a level playing field for all companies. However, after two years of attempting to move away from cookies, Google has reversed its decision, which is challenging as cookies are integral to their digital ecosystem.
Advertisers pushed back against the change, and Google has now decided to maintain cookie support. This setback has been tough, but it also gives us an opportunity to refine our solutions for advertisers. Mature advertisers, especially in Europe, are increasingly adopting our privacy-first solutions, so we’re taking on those markets where privacy concerns are paramount.
Tejas: To be future ready, we are working on solutions like contextual advertising, and we are building a unified persona based on mobile phone usage without collecting PII data.
Kunal: Since the last two years, there has been a lot of talk around third-party cookies. And Google just turned back from its decision. Whether it’s a cookie-less world or not, we have always attempted to be compliant when it comes to privacy.
Q] How is the work-culture at Mobavenue? Do you concur with Narayan Murthy’s 70-hour work philosophy or are you a little more relaxed?
Kunal: For a Founder, it is not just about putting in 60-70 hours, it can be something like 100 hours. But when it comes to your employees and colleagues, a work-life balance is required. I think we need to have a little bit of both to maintain this balance– The relaxed European style as well as Sir Narayan Murthy’s philosophy to push for more.
Q] In addition to being present in the top markets globally, and hitting big revenues, you are also profitable. In terms of business and expansion, what are your goals for the coming year?
Ishank: Since we started, one thing was clear– we wanted to be profitable. I believe in the last seven years of journey, there has not been a year when we were not profitable. Growing at 49% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) year-on-year, we aim to touch the 100-million-dollar mark soon. We have gone beyond India, to be present in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. We are expanding globally, with new offices in London, New York, and San Francisco, and we plan to open seven more offices worldwide in the next thousand days, aiming for one every three months. Our goal is to bring the solutions we have developed in Bharat to markets around the world.
Q] While we have talked about the green side, what are some of the biggest challenges that you face in today’s time?
Ishank: The journey from startup to enterprise has been fascinating, but it’s been marked by countless failures—nearly a thousand—before achieving any measure of success. Major setbacks often stem from financial discipline issues, hiring challenges, or entering new markets. For instance, we planned to launch in Dubai and Russia, but global events like COVID-19 and conflicts disrupted those plans. In today’s unpredictable digital economy, numerous factors can lead to failure. However, each success fuels our determination to solve complex problems for our customers. While we’ve faced many challenges, it’s the successes that keep us motivated.
Q] Lastly, what would be your advice to young entrepreneurs and those aspiring to start a business?
Kunal: If you’re young and thinking about starting something, it’s better to begin now rather than waiting until you graduate. Starting early gives you the opportunity to fail, learn, and try again, increasing your chances of success. You have the time to experiment and figure things out. However, if you don’t have this flexibility, you need to be very clear about your goals. Whether it’s in technology or any other field, you must have a focused direction. Simply jumping into a startup without a clear plan won’t lead anywhere. Take a calculated approach—outline your ideas, plan carefully, and then move forward.
Ishank: Startups are far riskier than they appear. While they may seem glamorous from the outside, the reality of running one daily is far from it. Persistence is key. When starting up, you must be prepared to fail—there’s a 99.9% chance you will. But if you can accept that and still push forward, that’s when you’re ready to start something on your own. Give yourself a thousand days. At Mobavenue, we plan for a thousand days, including our P&L, to gauge whether our idea can be executed effectively or if it’s just talk. Execution is crucial—focus on achieving goals, solving problems, and making money, not losing it.
