Mumbai–based video advertising and app monetization platform POKKT’s incentivised Android app, Pocket Money, has been acquired by Adways Inc, Japan and South East Asia’s mobile marketing company, for an undisclosed amount.
With this, the Japanese company will establish its Indian subsidiary, Adways Innovations India, in the country. It will also appoint Yu Ishida as their Country Manager.
Pocket Money is a reward-based ad platform that helps app developers to acquire and engage customers in a targeted way. It brings together colossal rewards-for-engagement platform with the best in-line offers and value exchange in return for a multitude of redemption options. It has been installed by over 6 Mn users in India, presently.
Rohit Sharma, Founder & CEO, POKKT said that Pocket Money is amongst the top 5 Apps in the category, with huge traction. However, they want to focus on their core business “POKKT Video Ads”, which is the leading Mobile Video Ad Platform for Games in India & SEA.
Pokkt was founded in October 2012 by Rohit Sharma (former CEO of Reliance Digital), Vaibhav Odhekar (founding member Zapak.com) and Manish Tewari (former founder of Koovs). Pokkt has four major offering in the market namely Connect, Play, Money and Prime. Its core business revolves around Connect and Play, where it reaches to Game and Video app developers providing SDKs. Pokkt Play is a video ads platform for video campaign.
Yu Ishida, Country Manager, Adways India, said, “India is one of the largest smartphone using markets in the world. Acquiring Pocket Money is a part of our user-acquisition strategy as an entry point for our business in India.”
According to a report by Counterpoint Research, India has become the second-largest smartphone market in terms of active unique smartphone users with 220 Mn users, surpassing the US market, followed by China. It is expected to reach 700 Mn by 2020, according to a report by CISCO. Also, the mobile advertising market has grown by 200% every year since 2013 in proportion to the growth of smartphone penetration.
Adways Innovation India aims to be committed to help domestic and overseas app developers and publishers expand their business in the best way possible by developing its own media platform in India and enhancing advertising agency business.
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