NEW DELHI: Zomato Pvt, an Indian food delivery startup backed by Jack Ma’s Ant Group, is planning to file the draft prospectus by April for its initial public offering that could raise about $650 million, according to people familiar with the matter. The company could complete the listing in Mumbai before the end of September, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private. Deliberations are ongoing and details of the offering such as size and timeline could change, the people said. A representative for Zomato didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Founded in 2008 in Delhi, the company employs more than 5,000 people, according to its website. Zomato recently raised $250 million from investors including Kora Management and Fidelity Management & Research Co, valuing the startup at $5.4 billion, according to an exchange filing in February by Info Edge India Ltd., an existing backer. The pandemic has driven many Indian consumers to shift their spending online, bolstering the fortunes of e-commerce firms like Zomato as they aim to go public. Nykaa E-Retail Pvt, backed by TPG Capital, is planning to list the company in the local market and to seek a valuation of at least $3 billion, Bloomberg News has reported. Global IPO volumes are heading for the best quarter since at least 2009 with more than $188 billion raised so far this year, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Bharti Airtel has announced a Made For India advertising platform called Airtel Ads that would allow brands to target customers with relevant advertisements and for customers to get hyper-targeted offers and more. This official release comes after the beta testing of the Airtel Ads platform, which saw more than 100 brands join the platform, with more than 8 billion impressions per months and more than Rs 100 crore in annualized revenue. Airtel will leverage platforms such as the Airtel direct to home (DTH) TV service, Airtel Thanks app, Airtel Xstream and Wynk Music, as well as the Airtel retail points. Airtel insists that the homegrown Airtel Ads is built for India and will be monitoring ad experiences to notice when a customer drops off, indicating that the ad delivery mechanism needs rework. At this time, Airtel has 320 million users in India, across the services they offer, including prepaid and postpaid mobile, Xstream broadband and DTH TV.
Airtel insists that the user data never leaves their ecosystem when the ads are delivered to users. Secondly, Airtel says that when the consumer engages with an advertisement on the Airtel Ads platform, all the user data remains private and secure and is not shared with any intermediaries. Also, Bharti Airtel says they will only work with brands that don’t offer family safe and child friendly content for advertising, across their platforms. What will be the focus ad delivery mediums for Airtel Ads? Airtel Ads will leverage their own apps and services including the Wynk music streaming app, the Airtel Thanks app and Airtel Xstream video streaming apps, as well as the Airtel DTH platform and the retail points at a market near you. Airtel believes that the real-world test they undertook last year with HDFC Bank at these stores translated into as many as 35,000 units per day sales for a unique life insurance pack priced at Re1 per day that were bundled with the Airtel prepaid recharge options.
Can Airtel Ads be disabled? Yes, there is an opt out feature across platforms allowing you to opt out of personalized ad suggestions. At this time, Airtel says they are working on a centralized toggle system to turn these ads on or off, but even now, the option is available across platforms.
The Indian Advertising Industry was worth $10 billion in the year 2020 and will be worth as much as $19 billion by the year 2025, according to the Digital Advertising In India 2020 report by the Dentsu Aegis Network. Of this, the share of the digital advertising specifically was $2 billion in 2020 while that is expected to grow to $8 billion by the year 2025. For Airtel Ads, there are more than 100 brands that are already using the platform including Pepsi, Zomato, Myntra, YouTube, SBI Card, CRED, Vahan, Lenskart.com, Unilever and Tata AIG.
Airtel has the highest mobile average revenue per user (ARPU) of Rs 166 per month and says that the average monthly data usage per customer is as high as 16.8GB, across the network. There are more than 17 million homes that are connected with the Airtel DTH service. The Airtel mobile network handles more than 3 billion calls every day while more than 55% of Airtel users make online transactions, with these totaling up to as much as Rs 5 billion worth of daily transactions including on the Airtel Payments Bank and Mitra platforms.
