Expanding Moloco Across India

India is a large and diverse country, with different hubs of tech, business, and media, representing a strategic investment for our company with boundless opportunities. As a market, the internet economy of India has grown to $150B and is expected to grow to $1T by 2030, as per a report by Bain & Co. We wanted enough presence to be close to our customers and also be able to attract the best talent who can closely collaborate together, which is why Moloco has decided to open shared office spaces in both Gurgaon and Bangalore. With open roles across human resources, sales and customer success – Moloco is constantly growing. All of Moloco’s open roles in India can be found here.?

We interviewed two Molocan leaders working out of our offices in India to ask them about why they joined Moloco at this pivotal moment, what they are excited about for Moloco’s future in India and what it’s like being the first employees leading the charge in India.?

Siddharth Jhawar: General Manager, India?

Q: In one sentence, what is it that you do at Moloco??

A: I am building Moloco in India by getting business and new clients, building a team with a shared vision of Moloco, marketing our brand to potential clients and setting up processes and systems.?

Q: What made you join Moloco??

A: Moloco is a rocketship — a group of exceptionally talented people are pushing the boundaries of machine learning, operating in a market with a huge opportunity and coming together at an exciting stage of growth. The macro fundamentals of the ad-tech industry, the incredible business metrics of Moloco, and the quality of people around you makes it a rare opportunity. I received an exciting opportunity to build India from 0 to 1 (and then to 10, 100, 1000….). This means we can shape the business strategy, team culture, and company’s market presence, all from scratch. Moloco’s culture encourages everyone to pass along a high degree of trust among their teams, and I enjoy that empowerment and flexibility. People choose leaders who they want to work with - I get to work with Sunil Rayan, my former boss at Hotstar. To be able to work with a leader who is humble, ambitious, knowledgeable, and deeply cares about his team is quite special.?

Q: What is the growth potential for Moloco in India? What exciting challenges do you have to solve in the coming months??

A: India is an exciting market for all three of Moloco’s businesses. For example, India is a competitive location for streaming players of the world, making our monetization solution for streaming very relevant here. The scale-up of entrepreneurship and venture capital has also given birth to a large number of marketplaces, gaming companies, e-commerce players, etc., all of whom could benefit from Moloco’s machine learning capabilities. At the same time, there are unique challenges such as low awareness of programmatic advertising and relatively smaller size of advertising market compared to more developed countries.?

Q: What was it like being one of the first employees based out of India??

A: The very first one, in my case! In the beginning, you have to convince everyone of the promise that Moloco holds — be that prospective clients, potential hires, or industry insiders. You thrive on small wins such as getting your first client to sign or making the first dollar of revenue or hiring team members who are smarter than yourself.?

Q: What would you like to say to someone considering joining Moloco in India??

A: Do it! I’ve bet my career on Moloco, because I believe in the people, technology and the macro fundamentals of the company. If you find a company that has the audacity, capability, and a real shot to innovate big tech in the next 10 years, would you rather join now or later?

Nikhil Rao: Director of Engineering

Q: In one sentence, what is it that you do at Moloco??

A: I’m an Engineering Director at Moloco and I lead Engineering for Moloco Monetization for Streaming & OTT.

Q: What made you join Moloco??

A: Moloco's mission struck a chord with me, as it aims to empower all businesses to grow through operational machine learning. Prior to Moloco, I was at Google for over 15 years where I witnessed firsthand the impressive capabilities that the latest machine learning advancements could bring about. I am very excited about getting the opportunity to make these innovations accessible to virtually any organization worldwide through Moloco.

Q: What is the growth potential for Moloco in India? What exciting challenges do you have to solve in the coming months??

A: Moloco is establishing a new engineering site in Bangalore where we plan to build our latest product offering: Monetization for Streaming & OTT. AVOD (Advertising-based Video on Demand) is one of the fastest growing verticals in ad-tech, and we closely collaborate with many streaming and OTT partners across the globe to help them monetize their streaming platforms. We leverage some of the most cutting edge machine learning technologies to help our partners solve hard and complex problems in this domain.

Q: What was it like being one of the first employees based out of India??

A: Building Moloco's presence in India has been an incredible experience. Moloco truly has a fantastic culture, and we strive to instill that culture and work ethic in Moloco India. It is heartening to witness our local market partners react very favorably to Moloco's value proposition. Furthermore, this is a great location to establish an engineering site, with access to world class talent.

Q: What would you like to say to someone considering joining Moloco in India??

A: Moloco is at an intriguing inflection point in its journey, expanding beyond its highly successful demand-side platform business and evolving into a multi-product company. Moloco's foundation rests on its expertise in machine learning, with the goal of harnessing machine learning’s potential to facilitate business growth and scalability. This is an exciting period to be a part of Moloco!

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