India fastest-growing market for Silicon Valley-based ad tech platform Moloco

According to Sunil Rayan, Moloco’s chief business officer, India represents a critical area for expansion. “India is our fastest-growing market. Apart from South Korea, it’s the only market where we operate across all three sectors: gaming, streaming, and e-commerce," Rayan told Mint.

Valued at over $2 billion last year after a secondary stock transaction, which saw investors like Fidelity Management & Research Company and Singapore-based global investor EDBI joining its cap table, Moloco was founded by South Korean-American Ahn Ikk-jin, a former YouTube monetization engineer who was part of the initial team brought in to address YouTube’s early financial challenges.

“He realized that YouTube was only monetizing its most popular videos, leaving a long tail of less-viewed content untapped," Rayan explained. This insight led to the development of machine learning models that target ads based on user profiles rather than content popularity. This technology was subsequently applied to Android and Google Play, where it proved equally effective.

Moloco began generating revenue in 2018

Recognizing inefficiencies in ad selling, Ikk-jin founded Moloco in 2013 and decided to create a demand-side platform (DSP) to aggregate ad spaces and optimise placements for advertisers. After several years of development, Moloco began generating revenue in 2018, achieving a 100-fold increase in the past five years, and crossed $1.5 billion in gross ad revenue last year, said Rayan.

Initially, the company focused on gaming and e-commerce solutions with DSP and Retail Media Platform (RMP). After Rayan was hired in July 2022, they also added the Streaming Media Monetisation Solution, a full-funnel solution enabling streaming companies to offer both brand and performance ads, expanding their total market opportunity, and increasing ad revenue.

Last year, Moloco entered India and signed its first partnership with Viacom18 for JioCinema to help them monetize the Indian Premier League.

Rayan said that the company’s partnership with Viacom18 to provide ad services for JioCinema underscores the scalability of its technology, which managed over 32 million peak concurrent users during the Indian Premier League 2023. “Our technology ensures ad campaigns can scale without breaking, even during unpredictable events like major sports matches," Rayan noted.

Also read: AI and Machine Learning set to drive India's $8 billion digital advertising industry, say experts

While Moloco is currently operating in 13 countries, with revenue being evenly split across Asia, America, and Europe, Rayan said it will invest in India, which is seen as a big potential market for all the three sectors it is present in.

After joining Moloco, Rayan tapped former Disney+Hotstar colleague Siddharth Jhawar, who was working at Zomato as vice-president and business head, hiring him as general manager for Moloco India. Since then, the India team has grown to around 25 people.

“We have 30 clients in India and we think we will continue to grow at a pretty fast pace. We are investing here as India is not just a business team, we have engineering, product, and other divisions too here. We are building a global engineering centre in India; the products will not be just for India but for other countries as well," he added. “We raised a big round from Tiger Global in 2021 and after that we are in no need for additional cash. We are already a profitable company and our focus is on sustainable, long-term growth. Some previous Series A investors have exited in the last secondary transaction. Now we have pretty much long-term investors on the cap table."