Two IIT (BHU) alumni make digital media buying & analytics simpler and effortless

Raghav Kansal was in the third year of his college (IIT-BHU) when he started his first venture with a couple of friends which was supposed to be an online portal for engineering students and aspirants. It was not a very smooth ride for the team, and the business was not picking up despite a decent traction on the website.

By the middle of his final year, Raghav had decided to discontinue the portal and move onto something else. “It was our last year, and I had not opted for placement so far. There was a lot of pressure to go for placements, but somehow I wanted to give another shot at entrepreneurship,” says Raghav.

The good part about his maiden venture was that in the process of promoting his last business online using social media, and search engines, he got very interested in digital marketing space.

“I first thought of developing a product related to digital marketing. The initial idea was to develop content optimization software for inbound marketing. I needed a co-founder with god-like coding skills. I happened to discuss the idea with my good friend Rajeev, who agreed to come on board. He also wanted to start out on his own, but due to certain financial constraints he was not willing to take the plunge,” adds Raghav.

After a lot of thought, the duo finally agreed to go ahead with ET Medialabs & build an analytics driven digital media buying platform. with the aim of helping diverse businesses in eliminating the need for analytics and technology manpower for executing digital marketing campaigns.

“We got ourselves registered and started working tirelessly on the product, and it took us around eight to ten months to come up with our first prototype. We entered with it into the market, and were disappointed to find a very low acceptance of the product we had worked so hard on. Time was running out and we desperately needed funds to survive. We took the services model to get some cash inflow and stay afloat,” reveals Rajeev.

The startup started pitching for digital marketing projects and witnessed decent response. “We decided to generate some revenue through the service model, and simultaneously figure out the exact need of the market and then accordingly tweak our product,” says Rajeev.

While working on one of the projects, an idea struck -- why not develop a product for digital advertising optimization and automation? This time before heading straight to development, they tested the acceptance of the product in the market. Soon they realized a platform for digital advertising is much easier to sell because of the immediate response in terms of delivering better results that are easily measurable. Hence, Adbytzz was born (it’s a product which will soon be launched by ET Medialabs).

“We pivoted our business model to a company that specializes in digital media buying, and started developing the digital advertising platform, while offering solutions around the same,” adds Raghav. The solution not only helped them remain cash flow positive, but more importantly, it made sure, that they develop what their customers need and address actual pain points.

Now with a tried and tested business model in place, version 1.0 of the product ready, a team of around 25 people & a decent client base the duo is planning to raise funding and take their venture to next level.

Website: ET Medialabs