Hotstar picks minority stake in Zapr

The two companies will work together to create a deep understanding of mobile audiences that can be leveraged by brands to create personalized communication and offers

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | March 7, 2017

Star India has made a minority investment in Bangalore-based media tech company Zapr Media Labs to help it evolve from a media startup to a full-fledged technology and analytics company aiming to shape the next wave of mobile usage and advertising in India. The two companies will work together to create a deep understanding of mobile audiences that can be leveraged by brands to create personalized communication and offers.

Zapr has built an analytics platform that allows advertisers to use it for sharper audience targeting and analysis. As part of the next stage of growth, the platform plans to invest further in R&D and grow the team across cross platform data sciences, analytics and product management.

Explaining the rationale of the strategic partnership, a press statement said: “While access to the internet has been exploding in India in the last few years, especially on the mobile screen, mobile marketing has been constrained till date by the lack of availability of platforms that marry deep user engagement and audience segmentation. While many brands have deployed significant amounts of money on mobile in the last few years, especially through banner and in stream display ads, marketers have been frustrated by the lack of brand building vehicles online that allow them to leverage deep audience analytics. In what is clearly a trail blazing move for digital marketing, the partnership could herald the emergence of more robust audience analytics and better accountability for results in the mobile marketing world.”

Ajit Mohan

Ajit Mohan, CEO, Hotstar, said, “In the transition from the broadcast world to the digital world, advertisers got a data bonanza but in the process had to give up the ability to engage consumers who are actually paying attention to what they are saying. Hotstar has the opportunity to build the world's first platform on digital where consumers are engaged and immersed while at the same time delivering deep audience understanding that allows brands to talk to individuals rather than segments. We believe that we have a shot at creating the world's premier truly personalized advertising service, which benefits both brands and consumers.”

Sandipan Mondal

Sandipan Mondal, Co-founder and CEO, Zapr Media Labs, said, “We are excited to partner with Hotstar and Star on our journey to build a world-class media-tech company out of India. Over the past few years, Zapr has grown into one of the world's largest media consumption repositories and audience cross-targeting platforms and this partnership further reinforces the incredible response we have received from our partners across brands, agencies and broadcasters. We look forward to accelerating the pace of our research & development, growing our product portfolio and building a deeper and long-lasting relationship with the larger media and advertising industry.”

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com