Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Helion Ventures have invested an undisclosed sum in online advertising network Komli. ContentSutra has confirmed the investment from Ravi Belani of Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Ashish Gupta of Helion Venture Partners.
But with Google such a dominant player, and there already other networks networks like Ozone Media and Tribal Fusion, is there a market for another advertising network? As per Amar Goel, Founder and CEO of Komli, around 40 percent of India’s online audience is outside the top 10 portals; Komli is competing for a share of distributed spends across various advertising networks. “The Indian online marketing space hasn’t evolved yet, but there is opportunity. Who’s doing affiliate marketing here? We don’t have as many advertisers as Google, but we’re a significant marketing partner for many,” he says.
As per Goel, some of the publishers in the Komli advertising network include Equitymaster, Yahoo, Lycos, Globe7, Dgreetings.com and NaukriHub.com, while they get advertising from TimesJobs, SimplyMarry, MakeMyTrip, Naukri and TribalDDB, among others.
Komli has an AdWords-like auction based networks, and has also announced the launch of a premium network. The company has offices in Mumbai, New York and Pune. The money will be used for recruiting, more office space and server infrastructure.
Goel had launched Chipshot.com in 1995 as a Harvard University student. As per CNet, the company had “raised some $50 million in four rounds of financing, including $29 million in fourth-round funding in June. Among the company’s backers were Sequoia Capital and Oracle Venture Fund.” The company eventually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 2000.
Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Helion Venture Partners have been previously involved with companies such as Skype, Overture, Hotmail, MakeMyTrip, Daksh, and Junglee.