Billion dollar dreams

City-based Ybrant Digital is all set to take huge strides in to the digital media business by taking over Experian businesses

Ybrant Digital, a City-based global digital marketing company, has come a long way to become one of the top three digital marketing companies in the world. The company started with Vijay Kancharla and Suresh Reddy in 1994 as USA greetings, acquired 11 companies from various countries overtime.

Talking about the first business idea, Reddy said, “Initially, we wanted to sell physical greetings but could not get them printed on time. Eventually, we took all those designs, put them on the web and created a virtual greeting card company. The company expanded in to the digital marketing business in 2000 and renamed itself as Ybrant Digital.”

“We have built platforms to wish employees with a newsletters engine, corporate and mobile greeting cards way ahead of time. However, we could not sell these to companies. At that time we just wanted to produce the best product and the market would buy it.

But this proved to be a bad miss. We then began conducting market research and expanded our services according to what the market wanted. We realised that when we make products of our liking we should either have the financial muscle to push it in to the market or the product should be so breakthrough that it takes off by itself,” said Reddy.

Ever since, Ybrant has grown by leaps and bounds by acquiring companies to increase and strengthen its product portfolio such as email marketing, display, social media, search and affiliate marketing. The group recently announced that it is in the process of taking over Experian businesses’ PriceGrabber, LowerMybills and ClassesUSA for $283 million.

Talking about the reasons for the acquisition, Reddy said, “There is a regular feedback mechanism from customers and sales. We realised that our sales force is strong and adding a couple of products to our portfolio would work. All these products are not only interesting from a consumer’s perspective, but also from the business perspective, which act as lead generators in consumer finance, shopping and education segments.

When asked about bringing these unique concepts to the Indian markets, Reddy said, “We don’t want to rush into the market without proper integration of newly acquired companies. The integration may take nine months to one year. Ybrant is looking at various markets in the world including India. We have been concentrating on the Indian market since last year. In the process, we are setting up offices across all the major cities to bring the systems in place.”

Talking about the industry, Reddy said, “Digital marketing is a $70 billion business. Most of the companies have turnovers of $100-200 million. The leading companies have a turnover of $500 million. There is need for growth and a lot of consolidation is going to happen. The market will reach $100 billion in the near future and for us to take a share in this pie is not impossible.

We wanted to be the leaders in the market and are among the top three companies in the world. We aim to become a $1 billion company over time.”

When asked about why Indian businesses could not produce global products, Reddy said, “We are beginning to see a lot of companies looking at worldwide opportunities. Every country takes time to start making an impact on the world. I believe that Indian businesses are taking huge strides towards that. In spite of our socioeconomic and political limitations, our entrepreneurs are unwilling to be bogged down.”

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Category: Business, Interviews