Posted by Adgully Bureau | February 18th, 2010 at 3:30 pm

Global Youth marketing Forum, on February 10, 2010, awarded ‘Star Youth Achiever’ to none other than Rammohan Sundaram, Founder-CEO-MD, NetworkPlay.in.

CMO Council is the strategic partner of Global Youth Marketing Forum. It was a grand affair and the panel included famous personalities like – Dheeraj Sinha, chief straregy officer, Bates 141; Dev Amritesh, Vice President Marketing, Domino’s Pizza, and Jay Gupta, Managing Director (MD), The Loot along with Suman Srivastava, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Euro RSCG.

Rammohan on receiving the award said, ““Any recognition from the industry is always a good feeling and this award just reinstates the belief and vision I had for our now 16 month old organisation, NetworkPlay. This award is also a clear recognition of the talent at NetworkPlay that makes me look so good, I am glad that we have one the best digital talent in the industry all focussed and close knit a unit that is striving for the betterment of the eco-system.”

Moreover, Ram has a more than 14 years of work experience, in his career he has worked with – Yahoo, Tribal DDB, Madison, Jobsahead.com (Now Monster Worldwide Company), Encore Events, Microland Group and Indian Express.

In fact, on February 11 2010 at the Indira International India Innovation Summit, NetworkPlay was honoured with the award – “Innovative Start-Up Of The Year”. The award was given for their active evangelisation on the format of they having embarked on Internet, Mobile and DTH space together catering to the brand advertising market through innovative engagement solutions where they are redefining the ROI metrics in the space for the eco-system.

www.dishtracking.com| February 18th

Global Youth Marketing Forum whose strategic partner is the CMO Council on the 10th of February awarded “Star Youth Achiever ” to Rammohan Sundaram, Founder, CEO & MD of NetworkPlay.in.

The panel included eminent personalities with the likes of Dheeraj Sinha, Chief Strategy Officer, Bates 141; Dev Amritesh, Vice President Marketing, Domino’s Pizza, and Jay Gupta, Managing Director, The Loot along with Suman Srivastava, Chief Executive Officer, Euro RSCG.

On receiving the award, Ram said, “Any recognition from the industry is always a good feeling and this award just reinstates the belief and vision I had for our now 16mnth old organisation, NetworkPlay. This award is also a clear recognition of the talent at NetworkPlay that makes me look so good, I am glad that we have one the best digital talent in the industry all focussed and close knit a unit that is striving for the betterment of the eco-system”

Ram has over 14 yrs of experience having worked with Yahoo, Tribal DDB, Madison, Jobsahead.com (Now Monster Worldwide Company), Encore Events, Microland Group and Indian Express.

Incidentally, NetworkPlay on the 11th of February also won the “Innovative Start-Up Of The Year” an award given at the Indira International India Innovation Summit for their active evangelisation on the format of they having embarked on Internet, Mobile and DTH space together catering to the brand advertising market through innovative engagement solutions where they are redefining the ROI metrics in the space for the eco-system.

NetworkPlay is a Capital 18 funded start-up and works with marquee publishers including LinkedIn, Makemytrip, Oneindia, Airtel DTH, Big TV to name a few with 3 offices across Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore.

February 18, 2010 | watblog.com

Global Youth Marketing Forum whose strategic partner is the CMO Council on the 10th of February awarded “Star Youth Achiever ” to Rammohan Sundaram, Founder, CEO & MD of NetworkPlay.in.

The panel included eminent personalities with the likes of Dheeraj Sinha, Chief Strategy Officer, Bates 141; Dev Amritesh, Vice President Marketing, Domino’s Pizza, and Jay Gupta, Managing Director, The Loot along with Suman Srivastava, Chief Executive Officer, Euro RSCG.

On receiving the award, Ram said, “Any recognition from the industry is always a good feeling and this award just reinstates the belief and vision I had for our now 16mnth old organisation, NetworkPlay. This award is also a clear recognition of the talent at NetworkPlay that makes me look so good, I am glad that we have one the best digital talent in the industry all focussed and close knit a unit that is striving for the betterment of the eco-system”

Ram has over 14 yrs of experience having worked with Yahoo, Tribal DDB, Madison, Jobsahead.com (Now Monster Worldwide Company), Encore Events, Microland Group and Indian Express.

Incidentally, NetworkPlay on the 11th of February also won the “Innovative Start-Up Of The Year” an award given at the Indira International India Innovation Summit for their active evangelisation on the format of they having embarked on Internet, Mobile and DTH space together catering to the brand advertising market through innovative engagement solutions where they are redefining the ROI metrics in the space for the eco-system.

NetworkPlay is a Capital 18 funded start-up and works with marquee publishers including LinkedIn, Makemytrip, Oneindia, Airtel DTH, Big TV to name a few with 3 offices across Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore.

February 18th, 2010 | medianama.com

Global Youth Marketing Forum whose strategic partner is the CMO Council on the 10th of February awarded “Star Youth Achiever ” to Rammohan Sundaram, Founder, CEO & MD of NetworkPlay.in.The panel included eminent personalities with the likes of Dheeraj Sinha, Chief Strategy Officer, Bates 141; Dev Amritesh, Vice President Marketing, Domino’s Pizza, and Jay Gupta, Managing Director, The Loot along with Suman Srivastava, Chief Executive Officer, Euro RSCG.On receiving the award, Ram said, “Any recognition from the industry is always a good feeling and this award just reinstates the belief and vision I had for our now 16mnth old organisation, NetworkPlay. This award is also a clear recognition of the talent at NetworkPlay that makes me look so good, I am glad that we have one the best digital talent in the industry all focussed and close knit a unit that is striving for the betterment of the eco-system”Ram has over 14 yrs of experience having worked with Yahoo, Tribal DDB, Madison, Jobsahead.com (Now Monster Worldwide Company), Encore Events, Microland Group and Indian Express.Incidentally, NetworkPlay on the 11th of February also won the “Innovative Start-Up Of The Year” an award given at the Indira International India Innovation Summit for their active evangelisation on the format of they having embarked on Internet, Mobile and DTH space together catering to the brand advertising market through innovative engagement solutions where they are redefining the ROI metrics in the space for the eco-system.NetworkPlay is a Capital 18 funded start-up and works with marquee publishers including LinkedIn, Makemytrip, Oneindia, Airtel DTH, Big TV to name a few with 3 offices across Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore.

Global Youth Marketing Forum whose strategic partner is the CMO Council on the 10th of February awarded “Star Youth Achiever ” to Rammohan Sundaram, Founder, CEO & MD of NetworkPlay.in.

The panel included eminent personalities with the likes of Dheeraj Sinha, Chief Strategy Officer, Bates 141; Dev Amritesh, Vice President Marketing, Domino’s Pizza, and Jay Gupta, Managing Director, The Loot along with Suman Srivastava, Chief Executive Officer, Euro RSCG.

On receiving the award, Ram said, “Any recognition from the industry is always a good feeling and this award just reinstates the belief and vision I had for our now 16mnth old organisation, NetworkPlay. This award is also a clear recognition of the talent at NetworkPlay that makes me look so good, I am glad that we have one the best digital talent in the industry all focussed and close knit a unit that is striving for the betterment of the eco-system”

Ram has over 14 yrs of experience having worked with Yahoo, Tribal DDB, Madison, Jobsahead.com (Now Monster Worldwide Company), Encore Events, Microland Group and Indian Express.

Incidentally, NetworkPlay on the 11th of February also won the “Innovative Start-Up Of The Year” an award given at the Indira International India Innovation Summit for their active evangelisation on the format of they having embarked on Internet, Mobile and DTH space together catering to the brand advertising market through innovative engagement solutions where they are redefining the ROI metrics in the space for the eco-system.

NetworkPlay is a Capital 18 funded start-up and works with marquee publishers including LinkedIn, Makemytrip, Oneindia, Airtel DTH, Big TV to name a few with 3 offices across Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore.

Mumbai, February 18, 2010| www.afaqs.com

Global Youth Marketing Forum whose strategic partner is the CMO Council on the 10th of February awarded "Star Youth Achiever " to Rammohan Sundaram, Founder, CEO & MD of NetworkPlay.in.

The panel included eminent personalities with the likes of Dheeraj Sinha, Chief Strategy Officer, Bates 141; Dev Amritesh, Vice President Marketing, Domino’s Pizza, and Jay Gupta, Managing Director, The Loot along with Suman Srivastava, Chief Executive Officer, Euro RSCG.

On receiving the award, Ram said, "Any recognition from the industry is always a good feeling and this award just reinstates the belief and vision I had for our now 16mnth old organisation, NetworkPlay. This award is also a clear recognition of the talent at NetworkPlay that makes me look so good, I am glad that we have one the best digital talent in the industry all focussed and close knit a unit that is striving for the betterment of the eco-system."

Ram has over 14 yrs of experience having worked with Yahoo, Tribal DDB, Madison, Jobsahead.com (Now Monster Worldwide Company), Encore Events, Microland Group and Indian Express.

Incidentally, NetworkPlay on the 11th of February also won the "Innovative Start-Up Of The Year" an award given at the Indira International India Innovation Summit for their active evangelisation on the format of they having embarked on Internet, Mobile and DTH space together catering to the brand advertising market through innovative engagement solutions where they are redefining the ROI metrics in the space for the eco-system.

NetworkPlay is a Capital 18 funded start-up and works with marquee publishers including LinkedIn, Makemytrip, Oneindia, Airtel DTH, Big TV to name a few with 3 offices across Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore.

February 18, 2010 | www.hclindia.com

Global Youth Marketing Forum whose strategic partner is the CMO Council on the 10th of February awarded “Star Youth Achiever ” to Rammohan Sundaram, Founder, CEO & MD of NetworkPlay.in.

The panel included eminent personalities with the likes of Dheeraj Sinha, Chief Strategy Officer, Bates 141; Dev Amritesh, Vice President Marketing, Domino’s Pizza, and Jay Gupta, Managing Director, The Loot along with Suman Srivastava, Chief Executive Officer, Euro RSCG.

On receiving the award, Ram said, “Any recognition from the industry is always a good feeling and this award just reinstates the belief and vision I had for our now 16mnth old organisation, NetworkPlay. This award is also a clear recognition of the talent at NetworkPlay that makes me look so good, I am glad that we have one the best digital talent in the industry all focussed and close knit a unit that is striving for the betterment of the eco-system”

Ram has over 14 yrs of experience having worked with Yahoo, Tribal DDB, Madison, Jobsahead.com (Now Monster Worldwide Company), Encore Events, Microland Group and Indian Express.

Incidentally, NetworkPlay on the 11th of February also won the “Innovative Start-Up Of The Year” an award given at the Indira International India Innovation Summit for their active evangelisation on the format of they having embarked on Internet, Mobile and DTH space together catering to the brand advertising market through innovative engagement solutions where they are redefining the ROI metrics in the space for the eco-system.

NetworkPlay is a Capital 18 funded start-up and works with marquee publishers including LinkedIn, Makemytrip, Oneindia, Airtel DTH, Big TV to name a few with 3 offices across Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore.

Media News | Mumbai, February 02, 2010 | www.afaqs.com

The new year begins with a bang at NetworkPlay, India’s No1 Vertical Multi-Genre Brand Ad-Network funded by Capital 18. Today, it announced a strategic partnership with Oneindia.in based in Bangalore where the entire India IP advertising monetisation will be solely handled by them. With this development NetworkPlay has the most robust offerings with over a billion PVs from its stable for advertisers to latch onto along with the 20M plus unique users from its federation making it undoubtedly the clear leader in the brand space in India.

Oneindia as per latest comscore ratings indicate that it has over 3M unique users from India every month and upwards of 100M PVs with News, Entertainment and Regional Content leading the pack in its offerings. Oneindia also operates, Thatscricket, Thatsmalayalam, Thatskannada, Thatstamil, Thatstelegu, Thatshindi as sub-domain portals in its motherbrand Oneindia.in.

BG. Mahesh, Founder & CEO of Oneindia.in, which is under the Greynium Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd. stable says, "We clearly see that the Indian marketplace is going towards the brand space with more traditional brands taking the internet more seriously and at this juncture we were seeking for a partner who are experienced and are evangelising the market right. NetworkPlay, with its impeccable record over the last 15months was our automatic partner keeping in mind the yields they have managed to render to their publisher partners. We are excited about this partnership and look forward to a fruitful alliance with NetworkPlay."

NetworkPlay works with some of the marquee publishers in the internet ecosystem in India with partners such as Makemytrip, LinkedIN, Airtel DTH, Big TV, Travelguru and a host of other publishers who are exclusive in nature and are redefining the ad-network space with a hybrid model with over 150 brands already having worked with them for their business objectives to be met online.

Rammohan Sundaram, Founder, CEO and MD of NetworkPlay added that, "We are committed to delivering value to our advertisers and this alliance is another step forward in the direction we have set in the marketplace. Oneindia is a big win for us and we know the power of that audience to ensure that it gets the right coverage within advertisers and agencies alike."

NetworkPlay and Oneindia coming together only showcases the fact that ad-networks will gain prominent share in the advertising pie going forward and the year 2010-2011 will be the age of internet advertising maturing in India where consolidation with publishers with companies like NetworkPlay only adds to the power of the network model in total.

February 03,2010 | exchange4media Mumbai Bureau

NetworkPlay, one of India’s leading vertical multi-genre brand ad-networks funded by Capital18, has announced a strategic partnership with Bangalore-based Oneindia.in, wherein the entire India IP advertising monetisation will be solely handled by them. With this development, NetworkPlay will have the most robust offerings with over a billion PVs from its stable for advertisers to latch onto, along with the 20 million plus unique users from its federation making it undoubtedly the clear leader in the brand space in India.

As per latest Comscore ratings, Oneindia has over 3 million unique users from India every month and upwards of 100 million PVs with news, entertainment and regional content leading the pack in its offerings. Oneindia also operates Thatscricket, Thatsmalayalam, Thatskannada, Thatstamil, Thatstelugu, Thatshindi as sub-domain portals in its mother brand Oneindia.in.

BG Mahesh, CEO, Oneindia.in, which is part of Greynium Information Technologies Pvt Ltd, said, “We clearly see that the Indian marketplace is going towards the brand space with more traditional brands taking the Internet more seriously and at this juncture, we were seeking for a partner who are experienced and are evangelising the market right. NetworkPlay, with its impeccable record over the last 15 months, was our automatic partner keeping in mind the yields they have managed to render to their publisher partners. We are excited about this partnership and look forward to a fruitful alliance with NetworkPlay.”

NetworkPlay works with some of the marquee publishers in the Internet ecosystem in India, with partners such as Makemytrip, LinkedIN, Airtel DTH, Big TV, Travelguru and a host of other publishers, who are exclusive in nature and are redefining the ad-network space with a hybrid model with over 150 brands already having worked with them for their business objectives to be met online.

Rammohan Sundaram, Founder and CEO, NetworkPlay, said, “We are committed to delivering value to our advertisers, and this alliance is another step forward in the direction we have set in the marketplace. Oneindia is a big win for us and we know the power of that audience to ensure that it gets the right coverage within advertisers and agencies alike.”

NetworkPlay and Oneindia coming together will showcase the fact that ad-networks will gain prominent share in the advertising pie going forward and the year 2010-11 will be the year of Internet advertising maturing in India, where consolidation with publishers with companies only adds to the power of the network model in total.

01 February, 2010 | www.alootechie.com

Vertical ad network NetworkPlay.in and multi-lingual portal OneIndia.in have signed a deal under which NetworkPlay will exclusively monetise the entire India traffic of OneIndia.in. Quoting figures from comScore, OneIndia claims to attract over 3 million unique visitors from India and record more than 100 million page views a month.

B G Mahesh, founder and CEO, OneIndia.in, which is a part of Bangalore-based Greynium Information Technologies, has said, “We clearly see that the Indian marketplace is going towards the brand space with more traditional brands taking the internet more seriously and at this juncture we were seeking for a partner who are experienced and are evangelising the market right.”

Rammohan Sundaram, founder, CEO and MD, NetworkPlay, has added, “We are committed to deliver value to our advertisers and this alliance is another step forward in the direction we have set in the marketplace.” NetworkPlay already has exclusive advertising deals with professional networking site LinkedIn, travel portals MakeMyTrip and Travelguru and DTH operators Airtel DTH and Big TV.

By Rajiv Dingra | February 3, 2010 | www.watblog.com

Latest in the news is networkplay.in which has announced yet another publisher addition in its kitty. Networkplay has announced a strategic partnership with Oneindia.in based in Bangalore where the entire India IP advertising monetisation will be solely handled by them. Oneindia has 3 Million unique users as per comscore from India every month and upwards of 100 Million page views with News, Entertainment and Regional Content leading the pack in its offerings. Oneindia also operates, Thatscricket, Thatsmalayalam, Thatskannada, Thatstamil, Thatstelegu, Thatshindi as sub-domain portals in its motherbrand Oneindia.in. Earlier networkplay has announced exclusive publisher tie ups with Linkedin, Gawker Media and more.

Robin Thomas | December 22, 2009 | exchange4media.com

Founded in the year 2008, online vertical ad network NetworkPlay.in has completed its first full year of operations, both in terms of calendar and financial year in 2009. While the year has been good for NetworkPlay, the company is aiming to triple its revenues in 2010. This apart, the company also aims to focus on premium offerings and increasing coverage.

The year 2009 also saw NetworkPlay make some big announcements, such as the partnership with LinkedIn to expand advertising sales in India; the year also saw Networkplay.in and Makemytrip.com sign a multi-year ad sales pact. The online vertical ad network was also seen exploring the DTH sector, wherein NetworkPlay entered into an ad sales partnership with Bharti Airtel for its DTH service, Airtel Digital TV.

On Monday, December 21, 2009, Reliance Big TV announced a strategic partnership with NetworkPlay.in to monetise all their interactive and video channel offerings.

In conversation with exchange4media, Rammohan Sundaram, Founder, CEO and Managing Director, Networkplay.in, said, “The year 2009 has been brilliant for NetworkPlay, this is our first full year in operations both in terms of calendar and financial and we have had an exceptional year now keeping pace with every other existing player in the market with a demand mix that is best in class when it comes to brands on board our network. Growth targets for 2010 is very clear – build on premium offerings, increase coverage and increase revenues three times.”

Achievements and future plans

Speaking on the achievements of NetworkPlay in 2009, Sundaram said, “NetworkPlay retained best of talent, attracted best of new talent, went ahead and launched innovative new media offerings by evangelizing the space and making DTH advertising a reality outside of video, continued on our brilliant track record of delivering clear value to advertisers through our premium audience offerings, reached our target revenues with a lot of hard work and finally successfully partnering everyone in the ecosystem to make Internet a medium not just for leads, which to me is a continuous process. However the big high is building on our belief of being brand centric and rowing the choppy waters of the blue ocean.”

NetworkPlay’s exclusive DTH arrangement with Airtel Digital TV claims to have launched India’s first skin integration innovation on the EPG (Electronic Programming Guide) screen that reaches over several million households across India.

Sundaram explained, “Yahoo’s ‘You’ campaign is a global rollout on how it’s the consumer of Yahoo who is actually the one who decides what he/she wants on Yahoo. That being the proposition, it’s always an interesting prospect where brands get newer audience from a medium that is new and reaching a large base across India. So what Yahoo did was take up the EPG screen where complete skin integration was executed with finesse and the red button application was used for landing page on the same medium. This is the first of its kind innovation that has happened in this format on the DTH medium. So every time someone switches on the TV, the screen lights up with the skin integration, which makes it look very vibrant.”

Going forward in 2010, it has been learnt that NetworkPlay is working on a product, a measurement tool which is said to be the most robust post campaign analytics that would be available in the country however not much detail was divulged at the time of filing the report.

22 December, 2009

Reliance Big TV, a DTH (direct-to-home) service provider and part of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, has partnered with vertical multi-genre brand ad network NetworkPlay.in to monetize its interactive and video channel offerings. Big TV claims to reach more than two million connections in over 6800 towns across India.

Sanjay Behl, CEO, Reliance Big TV and group head, brand and marketing, Reliance Communications, has said, “We have partnered with a young company like NetworkPlay basis their sales capabilities, evangelizing capabilities and their proven track record of working with marquee brands successfully delivering complete value to their partners.”

“With the robust technological backend of Reliance ADAG and measurable digital TV viewing experience in over two million homes, Reliance Big TV now has a platform for advertisers to latch onto, especially when they are looking for their brand communication to reach the right audience in the most cost-effective manner,” Sanjay Behl has added.

Rammohan Sundaram, founder, CEO and MD, NetworkPlay.in, has said, “Reliance Big TV is one of the fastest growing DTH brands in India and has impressively notched up over two million subscribers within 15 months of its launch. We would be driving tremendous value for all our advertiser partners through this platform.”

December 22, 09 | exchange4media.com

Reliance Big TV on Monday, December 21, 2009 announced that they have inked a strategic partnership with NetworkPlay.in, one of India’s leading vertical multi genre brand ad networks, to monetise all their interactive and video channel offerings.

Big TV offers multiple branding opportunities through their 23 owned and operated pay per view movie channels, interactive zones like IAstro, IStock, ICooking, and ICare and soon to be launched news channel called, “What’s on in India”. There exists multiple video opportunities outside of banner communications on Big TV whose reach is close over two million connections in over 6,800 towns across India.

Sanjay Behl, CEO, Reliance Big TV and Group Head Brand & Marketing – RCOM, said, “With the robust technological back end of Reliance ADAG and measurable digital TV viewing experience in over two million homes, Reliance BIG TV now has a platform for advertisers to latch onto, especially when they are looking for their brand communication to reach the right audience in the most cost-effective manner. We have partnered with a young company like NetworkPlay basis their sales capabilities, evangelising capabilities and their proven track record of working with marquee brands successfully delivering complete value to their partners.”

NetworkPlay.in works exclusively with many publisher partners, including the likes of Linkedin and Makemytrip in the web side of the business.

Rammohan Sundaram, Founder, CEO and MD of NetworkPlay.in is excited about the partnership and said, “Reliance Big TV one of the fastest growing DTH brands in India and has impressively notched up over two million subscribers within 15 months of its launch. We would be driving tremendous value for all our advertiser partners through this platform. I am confident that with this alliance our video offering will be nothing short of world class thus by beginning a new era in the digital space.”

NetworkPlay.in is a Capital 18 and GMV funded start-up and in their 14 months of existence has already worked with over 150 brands and already touted as India’s biggest brand ad network in the digital space.

afaqs! news bureau | afaqs! | New Delhi, December 23, 2009

Big TV, the DTH (direct to home) arm of the Reliance ADA Group, has entered into a strategic partnership with the ad network start-up, Networkplay.in, to monetise its video on demand (pay per view) and interactive offerings.

"Advertisers will be roped in for video on demand, electronic program guide (EPG) and interactive offerings of Big TV," says Rammohan Sundaram, founder, chief executive officer and managing director, Networkplay, in a conversation with afaqs!. Big TV has more than 20 interactive channels such as iStock, iCooking, iCricket and iCare.

He explains, "Video on demand service could be monetised through TV commercials. Similar to movie broadcast on a TV channel, the video on demand content such as a movie will also have commercial breaks in between."

For the interactive services, there are plans to offer advertising solutions including static and dynamic banner ads, branded skins and sponsorships of entire interactive sections or channels. The ads will be interactive in nature and Networkplay will also create landing pages for the ads. This implies that if a user clicks on a banner ad by pressing a red button available on the Big TV remote control, it will redirect users to a landing page, where more information about the advertised brand will be offered.

Ad slots will be sold on a fixed price basis. "It is a revenue-sharing deal," clarifies Sundaram, who refused to divulge details of the revenue sharing arrangement with Big TV.

According to an industry estimate, 60 per cent of the revenue earned through the monetisation of interactive offerings goes to the DTH firm, while the rest gets routed to the ad sales partner.

In an official communiqué, Sanjay Behl, group head, brand and marketing, Reliance Communications and chief executive officer, Big TV, says, "With the robust technological back end of the Reliance ADA Group and measurable digital TV viewing experience in more than two million homes, Reliance Big TV now has a platform for advertisers to latch on to, especially when they are looking for their brand communication to reach the right audience in the most cost effective manner."

For the record, Networkplay.in is also responsible for monetisation of the interactive offerings of Airtel digital, the DTH service of Bharti Airtel. The ad network company is funded by Goosefish Media Ventures and Capital18, the private equity arm of Network18.

By Audience Matters News Desk | Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Reliance Big TV have inked a strategic partnership with NetworkPlay.in, India’s No1 Vertical Multi Genre Brand Ad Network to monetize all their interactive and video channel offerings.

Big TV offers multiple branding opportunities through their 23 owned and operated pay per view movie channels, interactive zones like IAstro, IStock, ICooking, and ICare and soon to be launched news channel called, “What’s on in India”. There exists multiple Video opportunities outside of banner communications on Big TV whose reach is close over 2 Million connections in over 6800 towns across India.

iStock is a highly interactive stock market channel that is powerful where the active usage in terms of time spent is over half an hour in an average in the total of 2Mn connections and Icare as a channel is highly targeting to women audience and delivers interactive content on parenting, child care etc, which when clubbed with ICooking could match the best possible women target audience with very little or no spill over when compared to any other digital offerings in the marketplace.

Sanjay Behl, CEO of Reliance Big TV and Group Head Brand & Marketing – RCOM on the alliance says, “With the robust technological back end of Reliance ADAG and measurable digital TV viewing experience in over 2 Mn homes, Reliance BIG TV now has a platform for advertisers to latch onto, esp. when they are looking for their brand communication to reach the right audience in the most cost-effective manner. We have partnered with a young company like NetworkPlay basis their sales capabilities, evangelizing capabilities and their proven track record of working with marquee brands successfully delivering complete value to their partners.”

NetworkPlay.in works exclusively with many publisher partners including the likes of Linkedin and Makemytrip in the web side of the business.

Rammohan Sundaram, Founder, CEO & MD of NetworkPlay.in is excited on the partnership and said, “Reliance Big TV one of the fastest growing DTH brands in India and has impressively notched up over 2 Mln subscribers within 15 months of its launch. We would be driving tremendous value for all our advertiser partners through this platform. I am confident that with this alliance our video offering will be nothing short of world class thus by beginning a new era in the digital space”

NetworkPlay.in is a Capital 18 and GMV funded startup and in their 14months of existence has already worked with over 150 brands and already touted as India’s biggest brand ad network in the digital space.

---

15 Oct 09 | Source – audiencematters.com
Himanshu Verma

A year before a young team of people with a good experience in the new-media world explored a world of web business which was not touched before. You might get surprised after knowing that these daredevils came on track with the business at a time when many industry giants where busy concentrating on cost-cutting and when the economic slump was smothering the Indian market.

And that is when a company named “NetworkPlay” came into existence and around 9 AM on 15th of October, 2009 has completed one successful year. “What’s the big deal?” Is that what you are thinking? Then take this. Being indifferent to the economic droop, the organization moved with upward growth in its report card every quarter of the phase paralyzed by the recession.

So the obvious cliché question that comes to mind is how is the feeling, turning one? “I can never experience what a mother does on giving birth to her baby and nourishing it but to me this comes as close as that. We gave birth to this baby on the 15th of October 08 and today the joy of seeing it through to its first year is just not something I am able to capture in words. It’s unbelievable a feeling, a feeling that has a lot of energy, passion, fondness, love, pride all packaged into one” answers Rammohan Sundaram, Founder, CEO & MD, NetworkPlay.

Another question that comes to mind is why such a risky time to start up, and on top of it, with a business in an untouched sector. “RECESSION according to me is the right time to embark on any business because the opportunity to shape things in adversity helps you have more control over what you want and how you want it. We had a very clear strategy in mind; we worked on our execution capabilities because no strategy is worth its dime unless you have the capability to execute it and that being the mantra we immersed ourselves in the BLUE OCEAN” explains, Sundram. Further trying to simplify the concept breaks the Blue Ocean Strategy is:

• Create uncontested market space
• Make the competition irrelevant
• Create and capture new demand

Following this theory the founder believes they changed the dynamics of the business by not being a blind network, working only on audience engagement and innovations, addressing only the brand market and focusing on creating a market, which never existed thus by bringing in new demand. He further elucidates, “Keeping that theory in mind we have also embarked on our product offering that will be rolled out soon where metrics such as TOM, Brand Impact, SEC audience measurement, Time Spent, Reach etc are going to be made available in much more transparent manner than ever before.”

“Nothing is blind anymore” the company’s tagline is based on that transparency factor only.Every organisation in its life makes big achievements and slip-ups which are supposed to be the part and parcel of the business. NetworkPlay’s CEO believes that the only mistake they have done in the course of one year is that they lost an opportunity to launch their video network on time due to some issues around ad-serving capabilities. Briefing about the achievements he said, “Biggest achievement is we have some of the best alliance partnerships working with us and to name them – LinkedIn, Makemytrip, Travelguru, Aarzoo, AMEInfo, Bookmyshow etc and the feather in the cap surely is LinkedIn.”

Whatever new thing that comes in market and meets success is always followed, which sometimes turnout to be a risk. But NetworkPlay takes it as a compliment and the Managing Director says, “The biggest testimony of any success if when a competitor copies your model and a year of us being in business, we have seen some of our competitors embarking on our model, we welcome that because that’s the way to go in the Indian market and it only helps in evangelizing the medium in a way we foresee it. The industry is going to grow in this approach and everyone will be benefitted but our first mover advantage will remain and it’s evident that in our first year of operations we are no.1 in revenues in the space we are in.”

Envisaging the future of the organization Sundaram says, “I think we will be a 100+ Cr company in revenues, would have expanded to multiple geographies, grown the team in all aspects of the business including technology, would be a leading player in the mobile space and make NetworkPlay the first choice for employees to join in the space we are in”.

The company has done well in their own way in the first year of their existence and when asked what will be the suggestion to all the young entrepreneurs Sundaram sums up saying, “As an entrepreneur one has to learn to get thick skinned and we co founders learnt that very early on but kept pushing with our blue ocean efforts to reach to where we are today. So I my message to them will be keep it simple, focus on what you think will create value to the ecosystem, be ready to course correct a business model is you feel its failing and never ever give up!”

12 Oct 09 | New Delhi
Source – Kapil Ohri | afaqs! | New Delhi

NetworkPlay.in, an online advertising network funded by Capital18 and Goosefish Media Ventures, has appointed Harmeet Singh Arora as vice-president, network sales. He will report to Rammohan Sundaram, founder, chief executive officer and managing director, NetworkPlay.in.

Arora was earlier the head of media sales at Webaroo Technology, the company which owns the Web and mobile group messaging service, SMSGupshup.com.

Arora's appointment comes at a time when the company is venturing into the mobile ad sales business.

Arora has more than 15 years of work experience across Web, online gaming and mobile. Prior to Webaroo, he was the head of ad sales at InMobi (previously mKhoj), a mobile ad network company. Arora has also worked with companies such as Zapak.com and Rediff.com, where he was director, corporate business development.

Apart from hiring Arora, Networkplay has decided to divide its sales teams into two groups. A dedicated sales team, headed by Sunil Punjabi, co-founder and vice-president, sales, has been created to look after the monetisation or handle the ad sales business of Linkedin.com, the US-based business networking site. NetworkPlay is the exclusive ad sales partner for Linkedin.com in India.

The other team will look after the ad sales businesses for all other clients in the Web, DTH and mobile space. Speaking to afaqs!, Arora says, "I will be national head of the Web, DTH and mobile ad sales team." Earlier, a single ad sales team handled all the clients.

Notably, the announcement about creating a dedicated sales team for Linkedin.com has come after the visit of Dipchand Nishar, vice-president (products) Linkedin.com, who visited India in September.

On the creation of a dedicated sales team for Linkedin, Sundaram says, "We want to enhance our focus and ramp up our ad sales initiatives for Linkedin.com."

Globally, Linkedin.com has a user base of 48 million, of which more than 2.5 million users are based in India.

NetworkPlay has recently ventured into ad sales in the DTH space. It has already bagged the ad sales duties of the interactive channel of Airtel Digital TV.

© 2009 afaqs!

12 Oct 09 | Mumbai
Source – exchange4media | Mumbai Bureau

NetworkPlay has announced some structural changes to better facilitate the need of the market in their sales organisation. As part of these changes, Harmeet Singh Arora has been brought in as VP - Network Sales. He will be reporting to Rammohan Sundaram, Founder and CEO of NetworkPlay.in.

In his new role, Arora will be driving all advertising sales nationally for all initiatives of NetworkPlay, including web, DTH and mobile, excluding LinkedIn. Prior to this, Arora was Head of Media Sales at Webaroo, which owns the brand SMS GupShup.

Sunil Punjabi, Co-founder and VP, Networkplay.in, will now also be VP, Sales, for the LinkedIn business alone across India. This team will now comprise Meera Chopra, who continues to be AVP, Sales, but for LinkedIn alone with extended market responsibilities of the Southern markets. With her will be a team of three – Dilpreet Kaur Banerjee, Isha Shah and Varun Nambiar – thus ensuring LinkedIn’s sales are separate from the rest of the offerings.

Speaking on the developments, Rammohan Sundaram, Founder and CEO of NetworkPlay.in, said, “I am thankful to Sunil Punjabi and his relentless efforts of getting NetworkPlay to where it is today, it’s because of him and his team that we are where we are. Our next level of growth is going to be from a lot of power products that we are adding in the web, mobile and DTH, and for me it was clear that these products needed focused approach and hence the segregation of business.

The rest of the sales team at NetworkPlay.in will report into Harmeet Singh directly, while Distribution and Sales Strategy teams will continue to be under Rajesh Nair.

Arora said, “Working with a team that is vibrant, passionate and out to make an impact in the market is a different high, and what NetworkPlay.in has achieved in the last one year is there for everyone to see. I am looking forward to taking NetworkPlay.in to the next level.”

Arora comes with over 15 years of work experience in the web, online gaming and mobile space having worked with companies like HomeIndia.com, eIndia.com, Rediff.com, Zapak.com and mKhoj.com.

NetworkPlay is incubated by Capital18 and GMV and is said to be one of India’s No. 1 vertical multi-genre brand ad network.

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12 Sep 2009 | Mumbai
Source – Webneetech.com

Rajesh Nair, Rammohan Sundaram and Sunil Punjabi a pool of highly experienced professionals founded www.networkplay.in which is India’s first audience focused vertical ad network.

Networkplay is India’s first vertical brand ad network working only with brand advertisers and talking the audience language. It’s a one stop shop for an advertiser as they get to reach their target audience through a single platform. Networkplay.in funded by Capital 18, investment arm of the Network 18 Group Of Companies.

Webneetech.com interviewed Mr. Rajesh Nair one of the founders of www.networkplay.in to know more about this different platform for brand advertisers.

Q: How did you start your business? What made you to think to enter into a business?
The Founding Team knew each other for years and have worked on various large assignments together. We have been contemplating entrepreneurial route individually for quite sometime and in Sept’09 we got the opportunity to come together and launch a common platform of interest. We thank our investor’s Capital18 here for believing in us when the market was crashing.

Q: Tell us in detail about your business, your idea and how it can benefit others?
Networkplay is India’s first vertical brand ad network working only with brand advertisers and talking the audience language.

We founded this company with the philosophy of giving complete transparency to advertisers in terms of positions of advts and the publisher partner they would be associated with, with a clear option of selecting sites we represent when brands are in a planning mode to reach desired business objectives, which in turn gave us the impetus of bringing audiences segmented well to relevant categories thus by making us a open network with more salience on representation than just pure play ad-network.

It’s a one stop shop for an advertiser as they get to reach their target audience through a single platform. For eg., a product like blackberry gets to reach those who are on the move with our travel vertical which reaches out to almost 70% of the overall high-flying travel audience in the country.

Q: What are the important things which differentiate your business from other? What is your USP?
We opted for an untouched space in the ad network business wherein the advertiser gets to choose domains and sections where they wish to run their advts which is also demonstrated in our punch line – Nothing is blind anymore. All other ad networks operating in the country have been blind where the advertiser is unaware on his ad placements.

Q: What is your revenue or business model?
As mentioned earlier, we accumulate premium inventory from publishers across sectors and the same is then packaged as per advertiser’s requirement and target audience.

Q: In the next 5 year, what are your expansion plans and where do you see your business 5 years down the line? I am not in a position to reveal much on our expansion plans on date but then we are entering intro other delivery platforms like mobile, etc soon. We as a team definitely see ourselves being undisputed leaders in each of lines of business that we may be in.

Q: What were the biggest challenge(s) you faced in your journey as entrepreneur till now?
We launched this business when the world market was crashing and getting into recession. I will never say India is under recession but then there was definitely a slowdown in growth. To counter this sentiment and then the predominantly performance language market was indeed a challenge for us. But then we as a team looked at it as an opportunity and became winners.

Q: What is the biggest mistake you made as an amateur entrepreneur?
LOL… I’ve just not found time to evaluate whether I’ve done any mistake over the last couple of months as an entrepreneur

Q: Who is your business idol and why?
Mr.Ratan Tata has always been my business idol because he stands out for his modesty. At the same time his business dealings have reflected the bolder side of his personality which is evident in him building his group from a once-stodgy regional player into a global heavyweight. Further, he has managed to carry a clean image since he entered the business space.

Q: What’s your ultimate business and life goal?
Who is not interested in being a Google or Microsoft? But our immediate aim is to reach $100Mn mark in valuation and then take it forward from there.

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September 04, 09
Source - exchange4media | Mumbai Bureau

NetworkPlay.in, one of India’s leading vertical multi genre brand ad network funded by Capital18 (the venture funding arm of the Network18 Group) and GMV, has announced that it had entered into an exclusive advertising sales pact with Bharti Airtel for its DTH service, Airtel Digital TV.

The agreement allows NetworkPlay.in to have an exclusive selling and ad-serving rights on all of Airtel Digital TV’s owned and operated properties on its DTH platform. Airtel Digital TV claims to be the country’s only DTH service with MEPG 4 and DVBS 2 technology, which gives superior picture clarity.

Ampreet Singh, Co-founder of NetworkPlay.in, said, “To us, this space is a natural progression like mobile and IPTV, and we are very glad that we have embarked on this endeavour with a marquee brand like Airtel. This partnership is the beginning of our commitment to extend offerings for brands to reach the right audiences in the digital space outside of the Internet and we are extremely delighted to bring the DTH offerings to the market.”

Airtel Digital TV claims to bring many firsts to the DTH segment in India, such as a universal remote, which operates both the set-top box and TV set as well as interactive applications, which give customers the freedom to book movie tickets, travel package and shop for branded products, among others. Users can also access city-specific news and update themselves on the latest stock news. Airtel Digital TV also claims to be the only ones to facilitate listening to ad-free WorldSpace satellite radio.

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September 3, 2009
Source - Alootechie

Vertical multi-genre brand ad network NetworkPlay.in and Bharti Airtel have signed an exclusive ad sales deal under which NetworkPlay will have exclusive selling and ad-serving rights on Bharti Airtel’s DTH (direct-to-home) service, Airtel Digital TV. So far, NetworkPlay has been operating in the online and mobile space.

Ampreet Singh, co-founder, NetworkPlay.in, has said, “To us this space is a natural progression like mobile and IPTV and we are very glad that we have embarked on this endeavour with a marquee brand like Airtel. This partnership is the beginning of our commitment to extend offerings for brands to reach the right audiences in the digital space outside of the internet and we are extremely delighted to bring the DTH offerings to the market.”

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New Delhi, September 01, 2009
Source – afaqs.com

NetworkPlay.in, India’ s leading Vertical Multi Genre Brand Ad Network funded by Capital 18 (the venture funding arm of the Network 18 Group) and GMV today announced that it had entered into an exclusive advertising sales pact with Bharti Airtel for its DTH service-Airtel digital TV. As per the agreement, NetworkPlay.in will have exclusive selling and ad-serving rights on all of Airtel digital TV’s owned and operated properties on its DTH platform. Airtel digital TV is the country’s only DTH service with MEPG 4 and DVBS 2 technology which gives superior picture clarity.

Ampreet Singh, Co Founder of NetworkPlay.in, said, “To us this space is a natural progression like mobile and IPTV and we are very glad that we have embarked on this endeavour with a marquee brand like Airtel. This partnership is the beginning of our commitment to extend offerings for brands to reach the right audiences in the digital space outside of the internet and we are extremely delighted to bring the DTH offerings to the market.”

Digital TV – the DTH service from Airtel – is the only DTH service in the country which uses the latest MPEG4 standard with DVB S2 technology, which translates into superior picture clarity and consistent high-quality audio for the customer. It brings many firsts to the DTH segment in India including a Universal Remote which operates both the Set Top Box and TV set as well as Interactive Applications which give customers the freedom to book movie tickets, travel package and shop for branded products, among others. Users can also access city-specific news and update themselves on the latest stock news. We are also the only one to offer our customers the pleasure of listing to ad-free Worldspace Satellite radio. All this is backed by 24x7 cusomer care.

India's No.1 Vertical Multi Genre Brand Ad-Network
Sunil Punjabi, Co-founder, NetworkPlay

The scope and the potential in the internet have always been staggering. Sunil Punjabi recognized the latent promise that the internet held and came up with an idea to capitalize on this opportunity. Yourstory interviewed the Young Entrepreneur and he told us the story behind his company saying “NetworkPlay is India’s No.1 Verical Multi-Genre Brand Ad Network. In comparison to what is available in the market, NetworkPlay offers a completely different proposition of providing audiences rather than just blind inventory. And this audience is the right audience with effective targeting and high reach. We command Over 500 Million Exclusive PVs and 12 Million Unique Users across networks through our federation. The above combined with the inherent advantages of online business creates an unassailable value proposition in building sales and saliency for advertisers. We also exclusively represent LinkedIn for their advertising Sales in India.”

Sunil also spoke on the potential that he personally sees in the internet and the future roles his company will play through it saying “Internet Gurus state that the Internet Industry will grow to 1000 crores in a couple of years. If that is the number that one goes by, taking it from 350 crores (which it is at today) to 1000 crores will not come out of performance advertising alone. This means that Internet will have to find its rightful place as a Medium of Advertising. That currently is an evangelizing game because the advertiser does not still look at the Internet with the same filter as he looks at the other media. The scope of NetworkPlay is to restore the usage of Internet as a Branding Medium delivering the same metrics of branding such as Brand Impact, TOM, Engagement, etc. as other media and go beyond the click.”

“We have had over 50 advertisers on the network and this scale of advertising would have benefited at least 6 million of the 12 million unique users that we have on the network.”

He also explained how he turns audiences and the internet into a business opportunity. He gave us the gist of his formula saying “The biggest differentiator of our business is that we provide audiences and not just an inventory. As advertisers become more and more discerning, they look at reaching out to their target audience in a more focused approach rather than aiming at a large base in the hope of reaching out to a few relevant people. We provide the exact audiences to advertisers through our well-curated and selective network of sites that are bucketed in a few specific niches such as Travel, Women, Middle East, Business and News and of course on LinkedIn.”

He is keen to expand his influence and laid out a portion of his plans for the future of NetworkPlay saying “Immediate plans are to invest in an ad-serving technology, boost the network of sites and grow revenues four-fold. Apart from this, we would like to refrain from commenting on what our plans are.”

Sunil was always going to be an entrepreneur; all that was missing was the right idea to bank on. He told us about it saying “The thought of going entrepreneurial always existed in a nascent form in my mind. That, with the emergence of an idea that hadn’t been tried out in the Indian market before (that of creating a Brand Ad Network as opposed to a Performance dependant Ad Network) and the confidence of being able to put together a team that would take it to its logical conclusion were the clinchers.”

It was no easy going though as he had to change the way people saw the internet. Opening people’s eyes to the potential of the internet was not effortless. Sunil elaborated saying “The entire business model of getting advertisers to spend money on the Internet as a Branding Expense rather than for Performance is a big challenge in itself. NetworkPlay does not offer any Cost per Click or Cost per Lead deals. We only offer Cost per Mille (Impressions) deals, which were fast fading from the market as more and more performance networks and agencies specializing in performance based deals are entering the market. To go against the tide has been a challenge and to be able to crack some of the advertisers to not just listen to our point of view but also put money on it has been an achievement.”

Their Seed Funding was procured from Capital 18. They are also are a venture of Goosefish Media Ventures and Capital 18. With the hassle of expanses and funding out of the way the company has grown steadily, he stated his gains saying “Not wanting to sound boastful, our growth trajectory has been parallel to none. Having set up at a time when the markets is at its worst and also having adopted a business model that goes upstream there were the challenges but with the acute foresightedness of our founder Rammohan Sundaram and under his guidance, we rocked the first quarter of our existence and beat it in the second.”

“We started off as a fledgling unit of 5 people but we are spread across Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore with18 people now.”

Sunil is keen to recognize the key role his publishers have played and gave them their due saying “Our biggest achievement is the faith that the publishers we represent on our network have in us, which has prompted quite a few of them to have us exclusively represent them, something, which was unheard of till we came into the picture.”

“Bagging the LinkedIn contract while competing against stalwarts in the industry who have been here longer and in far bigger measures has been by far the largest recognition of our work.”

Sunil is also realistic about the ups and downs of entrepreneurship; he spoke of the rationale behind his motivation and said “That the ride is a rollercoaster ride is the motivation. I know the joy of cracking the smallest deal and the sorrow of losing one. Also the fact that our business model is now being adopted by a few other companies as well reinforcing the faith we have in our idea and it’s potential.”

He has no qualms about where he envisions his company by 2011 and stated “By 2010, as mentioned we will have grown four fold in revenues, by an equal number on the publisher representation side and would have at least the first cut of our own ad server rolled out. And, if all goes well, we would probably have at least one branch outside India as well.”

The winner of ‘Make an Ad’ competition in college has come a long way since peddling the fictitious merits ‘Hot Ice Cream’ that is good for the throat. He encourages those who would follow in his entrepreneurial example saying “As I always say, believe in yourself and your idea, have the courage to give it shape and the resilience to see it through right to the end. And most importantly, have fun while at it all.”

We at Yourstory appreciate Sunil’s vision of entrepreneurship and hope he continues his fine work and inspires others with his ideas.

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afaqs
Mumbai, June 17, 2009

Travelguru.com, India’s No.1 Hotel Booking Site formally today announced their advertising inventory monetization alliance with NetworkPlay.in. This alliance though a couple of months old is now exclusive with NetworkPlay.in and thus by making NetworkPlay.in the most powerful network when it comes to transactional audience in the country. NetworkPlay.in boasts of some very exclusive alliances in the transactional inventory that’s available in India, which will only help brand advertisers to reach their requisite audience when they are most receptive. Travelguru.com is India’s best hotel booking site and attracts the best in class audience who look up and book their holiday packages and hotel stay requirements online.

On the alliance, Rajesh Nair, Vice President – Distribution, NetworkPlay.in says, "In the last 7months of our operations advertisers have found value in our offerings as a vertical ad-network only because of the segmented route we have taken, off our bouquet we now have over 10 exclusive alliance, which makes us a must buy in the relevant categories we are in and with Travelguru.com, we have only added to the power of segmented and clear audience differentiation that we have on offer to ensure brand advertisers meet their desired campaign objective."

Travelguru.com’s CEO, Ashwin Damera is proud of this alliance and endorses that, “NetworkPlay has shown the necessary change that was critical in the Indian Internet Advertising Market by taking the route of brand advertising, which matches with our thought process of monetization of our inventory and they have proved their mettle over the last couple of months on what they can deliver to publishers like us and I am glad we have taken the right decision to partner them”.

NetworkPlay.in started operations on the 15th of October 2008 and has some very high profile exclusive alliances like LinkedIn, Makemytrip, and Bookmyshow to name a few and with Travelguru now part of this illustrious list it only shows that vertical ad-networks are making it count and brand advertising is growing for publishers to align exclusively with partners to monetize their advertising inventory.

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17 June, 2009 | alootechie

Vertical ad network NetworkPlay.in and online travel company Travelguru.com have signed a deal under which NetworkPlay will exclusively sell online inventory of Travelguru.com. NetworkPlay.in, which started operations in October 2008, has already signed exclusive ad sales partnership with companies like LinkedIn, MakeMyTrip and BookMyShow.

“In the last seven months of our operations advertisers have found value in our offerings as a vertical ad network, only because of the segmented route we have taken,” Rajesh Nair, vice president, distribution, NetworkPlay.in, has said.

“We now have over ten exclusive alliance which makes us a must buy in the categories we are in and with Travelguru.com, we have only added to the power of segmented and clear audience differentiation that we have on offer to ensure brand advertisers meet their desired campaign objective,” Nair has added.

“NetworkPlay has shown the necessary change that was critical in the Indian internet advertising market by taking the route of brand advertising,” Ashwin Damera, CEO, Travelguru.com, has said. “They have proved their mettle over the last couple of months on what they can deliver to publishers like us and I am glad we have taken the right decision to partner them.”

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exchange4media | Robin Thomas | May 20, 2009

The ad network industry in India is around 10 per cent of the total Internet advertising space and is growing at a fast rate. Networkplay.in, launched on October 15, 2008, by ex-Yahoo! employees and backed by Network18’s venture funding arm Capital18 and Goosefish Media Ventures, claims to have grown over 40 per cent in the first quarter itself. The online vertical ad network is confident of growing more than 60 per cent in the third quarter. The revenue of the organisation is mainly made up of its telecom, media, and travel and tourism clients.

In a market dominated by Cost per Click (CPC) or Cost per Lead (CPL), Networkplay.in has completely focused on Cost per Thousands (CPM) or Impressions, that is, building and evangelising the Indian Internet advertising market for brand advertisers.

The vertical ad network currently offers six verticals – Travel, Women, Social Conversational Media, News, Tech, and Health and Wellness – that have been built with the aim to help advertisers reach specific audience base, which can help brand advertisers reach their desired consumers effectively and reach out to consumers with specific interests and engage with their brands.

Speaking with exchange4media, Sunil Punjabi, Co-Founder and Vice President, Networkplay, explained, “As an advertising medium, the Internet industry is worth Rs 350 crore, which is poised to grow to Rs 1,000 crore, according to industry estimates, but the growth of the industry will not happen if it continues to sell only on performance. This will happen only if the Internet gets its place as an advertising medium, something that the industry started off with, and that that will happen only if non-advertisers on the Internet are converted to Internet advertisers.”

He further said, “There are a lot of companies that continue to go with performance, but we continue to believe that if the Internet is to grow, now is the time to ensure that more money is spent on the brand.”

Networkplay.in claims that its biggest achievement so far has been its contract with professional networking portal LinkedIn, which has also contributed to around 45-50 per cent of its advertising revenue. “Our greatest achievement came with signing LinkedIn as the exclusive representation in India. In fact, all the five companies that were bidding for LinkedIn were over two years in existence, and we were the only company who was in existence for six months at that time, but we still bagged the contract over others,” added Punjabi.

He further said, “Networkplay also aims to attract non-advertising clients to advertise on the Internet. For instance, it has got clients like Godrej Ezee, The Economist and India Today Book Club to advertise with them, to name a few, and these are the traditional non-advertisers who come on board with the organisation. “We are increasing our base by signing with clients that are not only on exclusive basis with us, but also with those that are on non-exclusive basis, therefore, there is no restriction to either of them.”

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exchange4media Mumbai Bureau | April 04, 2009

Close on the heels of an exclusive ad sales pact with business social networking site LinkedIn, online ad sales firm Networkplay.in has announced its partnership with travel portal Makemytrip.com for an ad sales alliance. The strategic alliance between the two is not new, however, the contract signed was for a short period, which has now been renewed for a multi-year period.

Rajesh Nair, Co-founder & VP - Distribution, NetworkPlay, said, "Makemytrip is a leader in the travel space and we are excited to partner them to showcase the value of their audience in the marketplace."

Sachin Bhatia, Co-founder of Makemytrip.com, said, "We evaluated a couple of ad networks and concluded that NetworkPlay's sales team is the best suited to monetise our audience and they showed tremendous passion for the business and also proved their mettle during our initial trial period. To me it was a natural progression to sign them as our official partners. I am now fully convinced on the partnership and look forward to a wonderful relationship."

Makemytrip claims to attract users of over 1.4 million with page views of over 40 million, while the average time spent by a consumer is 12.1 minutes.

NetworkPlay.in commenced its operations in the last quarter of 2008 and has shown traction over the last couple of months with both publisher acquisition and advertising sales.

This year definitely will be a year to watch out for in the ad-network space with at least a dozen networks in the marketplace, which only suggests that there will be consolidation going forward.

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afaqs! | New Delhi, April 03, 2009

Networkplay.in today officially announced a strategic ad-sales alliance with MMT, India's undisputed leader in the travel space. This announcement is not very surprising since NetworkPlay was selling MMT but the contract was for a short period of a quarter before and now has gotten renewed for a multi-year period.

Makemytrip attracts Unique Users of over 1.4 million with PVs of over 40 million and at an average time spent by a consumer is 12.1 minutes. This makes it a very strong when it comes to audience and keeping NetworkPlay's DNA of being an Brand Ad-Network, its not surprising to see MMT use them to monetize their inventory.

Rajesh Nair, Co - Founder & VP of Distribution at NetworkPlay says, "MMT is a leader in the travel space and we are excited to partner them to showcase the value of their audience in the marketplace."

Sachin Bhatia, Co - Founder of Makemytrip.com sounded gung-ho on the partnership and said, "We evaluated a couple of ad networks and concluded that NetworkPlay's sales team is the best suited to monetize our audience and they showed tremendous passion for the business and also proved their mettle during our initial trial period. To me it was a natural progression to sign them as our official partners. I am now fully convinced on the partnership and look forward to a wonderful relationship."

Sunil Punjabi, Co - Founder & VP - Sales seemed convinced on the audience metrics that MMT boasts of and said, "While we are seeing tremendous off-take in our bouquet, MMT is a very important partner to ensure we provide some innovative solutions to advertisers through a variety of ad products we are rolling out this quarter."

NetworkPlay.in started its operations in the last quarter of 2008 and has shown serious traction over the last couple of months with both publisher acquisition and advertising sales. This year definitely will be a year to watch out for in the ad-network space with atleast a dozen networks in the marketplace, which only suggests that there will be consolidation going forward.

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02 April, 2009 | AlooTechie

Vertical ad network NetworkPlay.in and professional networking site LinkedIn.com have signed a deal under which NetworkPlay ad sales team will exclusively sell advertising on LinkedIn India website to brands and advertisers in the country.

According to NetworkPlay, the partnership shows a vote of confidence for its understanding of the rapidly growing internet advertising market in India and its ability to differentiate and market LinkedIn's offerings to advertisers.

"We are excited about this partnership and are looking forward to showing brand advertisers how LinkedIn can help them reach their business objectives," Rammohan Sundaram, founder and CEO, NetworkPlay, has said. "LinkedIn's incredible targeting capabilities and healthy growth will allow our customers to easily connect with a large, highly-desirable audience in a rich and engaging environment."

LinkedIn claims to have over 38 million members worldwide as its members, representing all five hundred of the Fortune 500 companies, as well as a wide range of household names in technology, financial services, media, consumer goods, entertainment, fashion and other industries. According to the company, Indian members account for over 60 million page views per month and spend over 30 minutes on an average on the site.

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Kapil Ohri | afaqs! | New Delhi, April 02, 2009

The US based business networking site, Linkedin.com, is gearing up to earn more advertising dollars from the Indian market, which contributes about 60 million page views per month and has more than one million unique users from India.

It has appointed NetworkPlay, an online ad network backed by Goosefish Media Ventures and Capital 18, to exclusively represent it in the Indian market and get advertisers for the site.

"The portal has already roped in Airtel and Citibank as advertisers and it will target advertisers across automobile, FMCG, consumer durables, telecom and technology sectors," Rammohan Sundaram, founder and chief executive officer, NetworkPlay, tells afaqs!.

He adds, "Only brand related campaigns will be offered to advertisers and they will not be able to carry out lead generation campaigns."

Advertisers will be allowed to target and reach consumers based on the type of industry and work they are engaged in. Advertising options ranging from video ads to text and banner ads will be made available to the advertisers. In banner ads, the advertisers can choose between static, rich media and expandable banners.

It is interesting to note that the cost per thousand ad impressions (CPM) for regular banner ads on Linkedin.com is much higher than the social networking sites.

According to an industry estimate, Linkedin.com charges between Rs 400-500 per thousand banner ad impressions, while CPM rate for banner ads on social networking sites such as Facebook.com and Orkut.com are Rs 130 and Rs 118, respectively. The CPM rate for banner ads on BigAdda.com is Rs 110.

Brijj.com, the business networking portal in India owned by Naukri.com, still does not offer advertising on its site. Speaking to afaqs!, Hitesh Oberoi, chief operating officer, Info Edge, says, "We are not planning to monetise our traffic in the near future." The website claims that it has more than 1.5 million registered users.

Linkedin.com has more than 38 million registered members worldwide.

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April 01, 09
Source - exchange4media Mumbai Bureau

The advertising sales team of online ad sales firm Networkplay.in has been chosen to exclusively sell advertising on business social networking site LinkedIn to brands and advertisers in India.

Indians are said to be some of LinkedIn's most active users, accounting for over 60 million page views per month and spending over 30 minutes on average on the site. Rammohan Sundaram, Founder, CEO and Managing Director of Networkplay.in, said, "We are excited about this partnership and are looking forward to showing brand advertisers how LinkedIn can help them reach their business objectives. LinkedIn's incredible targeting capabilities and healthy growth will allow our customers to easily connect with a large, highly-desirable audience in a rich and engaging environment." On what it means for the online advertising space, Sundaram said, "What is very critical to understand is what brands want and what Linkedln has got to offer hits the nail right on the head and brand advertisers will latch on to it. This is going to be a huge catalyst in the brand space today and provide the momentum for traditional brand advertisers to come online. With a platform like this and a product offering that Linkedln has got and the kind of people that hook on to this networking site, we are going to take the whole industry to the next level."

Networkplay is one of the leading online ad sales firms in India. Funded by Capital 18 and GMV, they exclusively represent over 500 million page views, including leading professional networking site LinkedIn as well as key players in the travel industry.

LinkedIn has established the world's largest and most powerful business network. Currently, over 38 million professionals are on LinkedIn, representing all 500 of the Fortune 500 companies, as well as a wide range of household names in technology, financial services, media, consumer packaged goods, entertainment, fashion, and numerous other industries. LinkedIn is backed by world-class investors, including Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, the European Founders Fund, Bessemer Venture Partners, Bain Capital Ventures and now Goldman Sachs, The McGraw-Hill Companies, and SAP Ventures.

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Media News | New Delhi, February 17, 2009
Source - afaqs.com

Capital 18 funded Vertical Multi Genre Brand Ad-Network, Networkplay.in as per plan has launched its Shopping offerings to advertisers who can now reach out to the best possible audience who are looking at buying products online.

Networkplay already boasts of the best transactional audience available in India through its travel offerings and shopping only adds to this kitty where there exists a clear segmentation and intent of buying products online. To this effect, Networkplay has 6 sites to begin with and these include Naaptol.com, Cafegadgets.com, Storrz.com, Shopping.Zeenews.com, Infibeam.com and Onlinedeals.in.

Rajesh Nair, Co - Founder & VP, Networkplay.in says, "Its indeed a pleasure for us to launch these offerings in the marketplace where we are seeing tremendous growth in brand advertisers coming online and understanding the audience that they need to address and to that effect we knew that transactional offerings with clear traction only enables the brand advertisers to the fullest and we are certainly seeing brand advertisers coming of age with the little experience we have had since our launch in October"

Networkplay.in has already more than 30 advertisers and over 40 premium publishing partners and are seeing tremendous growth when the entire industry is seeing a slump in advertising dollars and to add to that they have also aggressively recruited some very senior people from the industry off late, which just shows that there is a clear value in their offerings.

Sunil Punjabi, Co Founder & VP Sales, Networkplay.in adds, "If there is value that is shown to an advertiser then its never difficult to make a decision for any brands whichever the medium is and to that effect even in such trying market conditions we have managed to do what we set out for and are poised for further growth and needless to say there isn't magic that we are doing, we are only going with the right pitches to the brand advertisers and mapping the requisite audience we have and they are seeing the value of our audience to be part of our network."

This sure seems to be the way forward for the industry, brand advertisers are slowly but steadily seeing and understanding what the internet has to offer and the market is steadily progressing towards audience that just measuring what CPAs should be. Though the value of CPA is an important parameter to gauge an online campaign there sure exists tremendous traction on audience based proposition online and Networkplay.in seems to be pioneering this effort.

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10 November, 2008
Source - alootechie

US-based Gawker Media has selected Capital18-funded vertical ad network NetworkPlay.in to exclusively represent its online ad inventory in India. Gawker publishes 12 media gossip and pop culture sites, including Silicon Valley gossip site Valleywag.com, gadgets review site Gizmodo.com and Hollywood lifestyle/entertainment portal Defamer.com.

Gawker Media claims to attract over 20 million unique visitors per month. Its readerships are believed to be young, educated, affluent and cosmopolitan. “Gawker's diversified site portfolio offers our sales team a wide range of marketable content,” Rammohan Sundaram, founder and managing director, NetworkPlay.in, has said.

“Gawker is excited about its growing traffic from India which has been growing almost 10 per cent month on month. We are delighted to partner with NetworkPlay in India since their philosophy of meeting quality advertisers with quality audiences matches the Gawker Portfolio proposition,” Gaby Darbyshire, VP, business development, Gawker Media, has added.

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Source – WATBlog.com

NetworkPlay the vertical centric ad network which just burst onto the scene recently and which was in the news a few weeks back for signing on Gawker media as one of the publishers has launched a new vertical today. Networkplay has ventured into the news vertical by signing on zeenews.com as the first publisher in this segment.

With the recent terror strikes in mumbai the news readership online definitely went up quite a few notches and suddenly the news segment especially online is a hot one. So this deal couldn’t have come at a better time for networkplay. Zeenews claims to have over 60 Million PageViews and over a 1 Million unique visitors a month! Given these numbers its quite a deal in the ad network space.

Our sources also informed us that come Jan and NetworkPlay would be launching the business vertical and signing on UTVi.com. This is still unconfirmed though.

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BS Reporter / Mumbai October 30, 2008, 0:03 IST
Source – Business Standard

Industry veteran Rammohan Sundaram, whose previous assignments included heading the national sales team at Yahoo, Tribal Media and Madison has established a digital advertising space networkplay.in. Joining Sundaram are four of his former colleagues from Yahoo and Sidharth Rao of online search advertising firm Webchutney. The venture has found venture capital funding from Network18's capital lending arm Capital18.

Networkplay.in is focused on audience-centric vertical ad-network targeting brand advertisers. It will cater to the Rs 100-crore advertising banner space, estimated to grow at 20-25 per cent annually and become a Rs 550-crore market by 2010-11. "Our plan is to grow the market by bringing in traditional companies from verticals such as FMCG, healthcare, education and mobility companies online," said Sundaram.

Currently, it has launched two offerings for travel and women verticals and will soon launch business, technology, news, shopping, social media and entertainment categories as well

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By Rajiv Dingra • October 15, 2008
Source - WATBlog.com

So it was just recently that Goose Fish Media Ventures (owned by Sidharth Rao - Founder of Webchutney) had announced the launch of two vertical ad networks in GoSinbad and Divanation. But now it seems they realized that having one network which focuses on verticals would be far easier scale.

So they have merged the two vertical network’s into one mother network in NetworkPlay.in and have also roped in Rammohan who was earlier the National Sales Head - Performance Accounts at Yahoo India.

We caught up with RamMohan and questioned him on NetworkPlay. Find his answers below:

1) Why roll two vertical networks divanation and Gosinbad into one?
Whats the advantage?

A) The advantage of having multi-vertical opportunity under one umbrella answers our USP to begin with. We are not blind and the audience segmentation is very distinct which enables advertisers to know exactly where their campaigns are running and mapping of a brand with its audience becomes specific. We are not in the game of selling inventory but audience and going forward with our proprietary ad technology vertical audience have a huge role to play in our behavioural and re targeting capabilities we are building.
In-fact we are launching another 6 verticals outside of travel and women, which are our current offerings by the first quarter of 09.

2) There are already 4 funded adnetworks in tyroo, komli, ozone and admagnet with none of them having any real differentiation. How is NetworkPlay any different?
A) Our biggest differentiation is we are not blind a ad network and we are vertical in nature.

3) Given your Yahoo experience what kind of growth do you expect for networkplay? Could you share some projected revenue numbers for next 3 years?
A) In the 350 Crore Indian internet advertising market, networks contribute 8% and going forward this number will swell to 25-30% by 2010-2011.

4) What are the typical margins in the adnetwork business i.e. what % of media buy is gross profit for ad networks? Or would you be working on a pay for performance (per click, per lead) basis?

A) Because we sell audience and we believe that if the Indian Internet Advertising Market has to be 1000 crores by 2010 - 2011 then this growth will only come when traditional brand advertisers come online and we are catering to these advertisers keeping in mind the future. Though we will have our product built around all available parameters of measurements viz, CPM, CPC and CPA, we will focus on delivering audience than selling vanilla inventory.

WATBlog analysis: The adnetworks space is a crowded one and currently most adnetworks have little or no differentiation as most of them are catering to pay for perfomance advertisers. Over time I expect a shake up in the market with each of them either finding/building their USP and niche or getting sold or acquired by traditional agencies wanting to go digital. Also publishers themselves are launching ad networks with ibibo launching an adnetwork. A trend we blogged about recently.

We asked Sidharth Rao Of Goose Fish And Webchutney if he would advise another entrepreneur to venture into the already crowded ad network space and his reply was “Get quality publishers on board if u think of vertical networks. Brands want to be in environments that they can trust! If you can do that then you should start an adnetwork!”

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15 October, 2008
Source - Alootechie

NetworkPlay.in , which is backed by Network 18’s venture funding arm Capital 18 and Goosefish Media Ventures , has launched an audience focused vertical ad network targeting brand advertisers. The NetworkPlay team, which consist of Ex-Yahoo employees, is led by Rammohan Sundaram, former national sales head, performance accounts, Yahoo India.

NetworkPlay is currently offering two channels -- Travel and Women -- with plans to introduce other channels including Business, Technology, News, Shopping, Social Media and Entertainment in the first quarter of 2009.

According to NetworkPlay, these verticals are built around the company's core philosophy of building categories around a specific audience base which can help brand advertisers reach their desired consumers effectively.

Going with the philosophy of nothing being blind on the network, all publishers are curated for quality checks and then pre-qualified to run custom advertising creative and rich media ad units like expendable’s, in-banner video, as well as custom sponsorships and placements, the company has said.

NetworkPlay.in is also building its proprietary ad serving platform that would focus on yield maximization for publishers in a bid environment. The launch of the platform is expected to be in the second quarter of 2009.

Rammohan Sundaram, founder and managing director, NetworkPlay.in, has said, “All ad networks today sell inventory without differentiation which is why earlier this year they were accused in the US for trading ad inventory like pork-bellies. Indian media is faced by the same issues -- undifferentiated inventory. With our vertical network concept starting with Travel and Women we are in the business of selling audiences not inventory.”

“We will leverage these assets and capabilities to deliver what Brand advertisers want most – quality, scale and value. Our quality publisher partners and brand advertisers realize that and we rightly poised to make the most of the Rs 1000 crore online advertising market by 2010,” Rammohan Sundaram has added.

Sarbvir Singh, managing director, Capital 18, has said, “Brand marketers are looking for differentiated solutions on the web that would enable them to target and reach their consumers who are spending increasing time online. This can only be done when there is transparency, a technology based solution and a team that can evangelize the solution. We are delighted to partner with Ram and his team on this pioneering venture.”

Sidharth Rao, director, Goosefish Media Ventures, has said, “Over the last couple of months we had ventured in the travel space with partners like MakeMyTrip, Yatra, Cleartrip and recognised the opportunity for vertical ad networks early enough and going with GMV’s philosophy, we wanted to get a crack team that would take this to the next level. We found this in Ram’s team and we are delighted to have partnered with Ram to launch NetworkPlay.in.”

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Kapil Ohri | afaqs! | New Delhi, October 15, 2008
Source – afaqs.com

Rammohan Sundaram, ex-national sales head, performance accounts, Yahoo! India and Sidharth Rao, director, Goosefish Media Ventures, have partnered to launch a new ad network company called NetworkPlay.in. The company will be funded and incubated by Goosefish Media Ventures and Capital 18, Network18's venture capital and private equity arm.

For the uninitiated, an ad network connects advertisers with publishers. On one side, it ties up with various publishers to sell or serve ads on their websites and on the other side, it helps advertisers and enables them to get their ads placed on the websites where they expect their target audience to be available.

NetworkPlay.in will offer advertisers to serve their ads across different categories of portals. Speaking to afaqs!, Rao explains, “With the formation of NetworkPlay.in, Goosefish Media Ventures’ existing vertical ad networks, called GoSindbad.com (targeted at travel and airline websites) and DivaNation.in (targeted at women oriented websites) has been merged with NetworkPlay.in.”

Rammohan Sundaram
He adds, “These will be offered as separate channels on the portal. To begin with, we will offer advertisers to serve their ads across travel and women related sites in India.”

Rao further adds, “Later on, in the first quarter of 2009, we will roll out more channels within NetworkPlay.in which will allow advertisers to serve their ads across business, technology, news, shopping, social media and entertainment related websites.”

On the type of ads to be offered to the advertisers, Sundaram, founder and managing director, NetworkPlay.in, says, “Advertisers can opt for display and rich media ads, including video ads, to carry out their brand building and engagement based campaigns on the Internet.” Text ads might be offered at a later stage. He adds, “Advertisers may also be offered to sponsor or create a branded water mark inside a particular section or community on a portal.”

The company will initially sell ad inventory on the basis of cost per impression (CPM) and it will measure the effectiveness of an ad on different parameters such as top of mind recall, reach, engagement and time spent by a viewer on an ad. NetworkPlay.in has already tied up with publishers or websites such as Yatra.com, MakeMyTrip.com and OkTataByeBye.com.

October 15 2008, 08:34:00 IST | MADHAV A CHANCHANI
Source – vccircle.com

The team comprises of former Yahoo employees and has launched two verticals, which are travel and women.

NetworkPlay.in, an audience focused vertical ad network company, has announced that it has raised undisclosed seed funding from Capital18 (Network18's VC/PE arm) and Goosefish Media Ventures. The firm has also announced the launch of its first two verticals today, which will be travel and women. But the initial brand names of GoSindbad and DivaNation have been dropped.

NetworkPlay is targeting brand advertisers. In a release the firm said that the verticals are built around the company's core philosophy of building categories around a specific audience base which can help brand advertisers reach their desired consumers effectively.

Though the travel vertical is operational now, the women portal will take time. The travel platform presently has 15 brands which include Geojit Financial Services Ltd, ICICI Wealth Management, Hyundai etc who are advertising on the other travel portals.

Other verticals it is looking at are - business, technology, news, shopping, social media, and entertainment - and will be launched by first quarter of 2009. The team at NetworkPlay constitutes of ex-Yahoo employees. Currently there are 8 people in the team in Delhi and Mumbai.

NetworkPlay is also developing proprietary ad serving platform that would focus on yield maximization for publishers in a bid environment. The launch of the platform will be in the second quarter of 2009.

Rammohan Sundaram, who was the National Sales Manager of Yahoo, is the founder and MD of NetworkPlay. He says that ad networks today sell inventory without differentiation and that is where NetworkPlay plans to step in. They plan to be much more transparent.

Another similar company in this segment is Bangalore-based Ozone Media. It raised first round of funding from IDG Ventures in June this year. Ozone offers customised service for advertisers across verticals such as news, financial services and entertainment. Their business model is to aggregate small and medium sized publishers who do not have their own sales force and sell the inventory to advertisers. In the US, there are companies like Federated Media (FMPub) and women's ad network Glam Media (which was earlier this year valued at over $1 billion).

Internet advertising in India is expected to grow to Rs 1,000 crore by 2010. Some other companies active in this segment in India are - Komli (funded by Helion Ventures, DFJ and Nexus India Capital), Adchakra (by Percept Holdings), Interactive Avenues (Sequoia Capital India) and Tyroo (part-owned by Yahoo and Quasar). Martin Sorrell WPP has a 75% stake in Quasar.

Goosefish, a subsidiary of Webchutney, also runs websites as part of its potfolio. One is Alootechie, which writes about Indian online industry, and other is BombayBitch. Capital18's most recent investment was series A funding of Ubona Technologies, a voice-based search company. It has also invested in Webchutney and some others like home shopping channel HomeShop18 and multiplex company Star Gaze.