Mumbai: 42Company India Pvt. Ltd, makers of mobile marketing app SlideApp said it has raised $3.6 million in a series-A round of funding led by Songhyun Investment, a South Korean venture capital firm.
The company will use the funds to expand for increasing user base, product development and marketing. Previously, the company had raised $1.2 million in seed funding.
Launched in 2015, by Amrita Gujral and Nakul Sethi, SlideApp is an Android app that rewards users for the content he or she reads. The user can choose the subject of content based on interests published by various advertisers or from bloggers.
“SlideApp incentives its mobile users by awarding credit points every time they read content customized to their preference. The reward points accumulated can then be further utilized for mobile recharges,” the company said in a statement.
SlideApp functions when a user tries to unlock the phone. The user can swipe right on the phone screen to unlock the phone and swipe left to read up content on the screen, according to the mobile app’s description on Google Playstore.
Claiming to have over five million downloads, the company says that SlideApp acts as a low-cost marketing tool for businesses.
“We focus on providing quality content to our users as well as detailed and relevant analytics to our B2B (business-to-business) customer base (that is, advertisers). The fresh round of investment will be used to enhance our targeting capabilities and unique advertising promotions,” said Sethi.
The company expects to use Songhyun’s support to expand to overseas market.
Another mobile application that rewards users for listening to advertisement jingles as ringtones is, Paytunes (Real Time Networks Pvt. Ltd). Also founded in 2015, Paytunes raised $500,000 in pre-series A funding from Indian Angel Network and CIO Angel Network, in June this year.
As per a recent e-Marketer report, digital advertising spend in India is $1 billion, out of which mobile advertising is $0.18 billion. By 2019, the digital ad spend is expected to grow to $2.17 billion and mobile advertising to $1.23 billion.
Source: livemint
