100 Days

So today I complete 100 days at IbiboAds as its CEO and phew...time seems to fly when there is so much action around you. But the truth is that I always believed that action happens when your mind is focused on getting things done, that is how I have always worked over the last several years in my leadership roles and I keep telling this to my first line all the time that lets get the strategy right and focus on execution and only execution because once the strategy is done and if you execute it right then the time frame for getting all that you wanted is never beyond 18 months and post that a well oiled machinery runs on its own for at-least two more years during, which time we could focus on what is that next big thing one needs to focus on whether it is a new product or any new innovation in the current lines of businesses so that the next 18 months after the initial two years post the first 18 months has enough meat for us to then go full throttle.

That's exactly what I did even at IbiboAds. First up I gauged the potential of the existing team, then designed a vision as to how and where I would want to take this company, assessed resources, divided businesses, got responsibilities aligned, hired talent and boom now all set to take that big leap.

As I write this piece we have grown exponentially, we have attracted the best in class talent across engineering, product, sales and strategy and we are all set to build some of the best solutions that businesses need in the digital space.

From day one we were clear that we want to be a platform business and had to focus on things that really mattered, while we did have one product offering through Re-targeting, it was only used for all our internal clients however the results were fantastic and we knew we had a winner. This was only run on GDN to begin with but we knew we had to be omnipresent and wanted to make sure that the two (Stealth BT) products we have, had a good mix of supply across all possible touch points and destinations and the only way we could accomplish that was to spread our wings across all ports of destinations through various exchanges and today we have the access through our seats in at least 16 exchanges and adding to that list every day.

Now we knew that we had to have specialized approach to this business in specific given it has a lot of product and tech driven approach that will require skill sets that are not common in every media sales personnel. So we embarked on getting the best talent available in the marketplace and Chirag Bhatia from Yahoo now drives this piece as Director of Adtech Sales & Solutions. The work has just begun given this is a client facing role with inputs that will come back to the new product leads we have hired. I am glad with the pedigree we have, we set ourselves a task of bringing in the best possible people into the grove and we got that for both our engineering and product teams under our Director of Engineering & Product, Nitin Pathak. I am extremely happy with the progress we are making on building our RTB engine, which should be ready by the end of this year and that will be followed by our DMP Beta, which is where we are sure of creating that big differentiation that is required for marketers to capitalize on. Our DMP product will be first of its kind in the world and I can't wait for March 2015 no more. I am excited about this effort simply because of the kind of science that is going into building a marketer centric product that will have various measurements outside of the current ones available in the space and yes we have cracked that piece and how. More on that as we get closer to our product launches.

The second piece was the existing business of Affiliate Marketing, we moved this under our old war horse Anuj Dua, who is the Director of Affiliate Business nationally and got him to focus only on growing our coverage and delivery capabilities with Gandharv Bazaz who is our Head Of Operations across all verticals and what a commendable job they have done growing the story to the next level. This piece continues to grow and I am proud of what they do given it is such a complicated space in affiliate marketing in India.

The final piece of the Jigsaw Puzzle was the brand business and I am so excited with some of the formats we now have and how these enable the kind of engagements and impact that brands seek while they reach out to their audience in the internet and mobile space. To that effect we did some of the best brand campaigns for several of Reliance's Consumer Facing Brands, that falls under our "Demand Side Control" strategy. We now have a managed publisher base of over 150 and with our DSC strategy access premium sites with guaranteed deliveries across all major top 10 portals on ComScore in India. I am very excited to have Neha Jolly who joins us in a week's time as Director Of Brand Business to lead this piece. Neha has worked with me in the past and I can't think of anyone better than her to lead us for this business.

We now have separate identities for all our business and I am very excited to announce the launch of each of these.

Our platform business is now called IbiboAds Visco - Visco in Latin means "sticky" and our products are sticky across everyone in the ecosystem given we follow the consumer through our RT programs, our RTB will address the trade and our DMP will address the marketers making it sticky across all stake holders who would use our products and services.

Our affiliate business is now called IbiboAds Profit, simply put we want to be partners to all the businesses and help them achieve their business objectives at costs that are budgeted by the client on whether CPC, CPL, CPA or CPS.

Finally, our brand business is termed as IbiboAds Splash. Splash because all our formats are rich media and are big formats that literally splashes on the screen. These are typically used for impact buys by the client and are extremely engaging in nature.

All these are businesses that has one of the best leaders of sales I have ever worked with over the last several years and with Hemali Dave as VP & Head of Monetization along with Jaswant Binepal as VP & Head Of Sales Strategy, we are set for the best phase of IbiboAds ever and I can't wait anymore to see all that we are rolling out.

In 100 days I feel happy looking back but I have always believed that you are as good as what you delivered today and so I am looking forward to the next 100 days, lets go.....