Meet the startup bringing hyperlocal to adtech

Photo credit: Rob Young.

Advertising can be a rough venture in India. Despite the number of people switching to smartphones, a number only expected to grow over the next few years, digital advertising only leveled out to US$2.50 per Indian internet user last year.

Depending on whether you’re a glass half-empty or a glass half-full kind of person, that means working in digital ads in the country can either be akin to shoving a large and expensive boulder up a hill or hold a lot of opportunity.

Digital advertising only leveled out to US$2.50 per Indian internet user last year

Nitin Jain, Pankaj Kandhari, Naveen Sharma, and Anupam Sorabh looked at the space and figured that the best approach was taking things back to the basics.

“You know how quantum physics changed everything?” Nitin explains. “Similarly, a city is nothing but a cluster of various hyperlocal areas.”

Theirin lies the rationale behind their startup, Mumbai-based Machadalo, which takes a hyperlocal approach to advertising. Started by Anupam and Nitin, Machadalo is Hindi for “let’s do it” and a common encouragement phrase among IITans (Nitin, Pankaj, and Naveen all graduated from IIT-Bombay). It’s also Nitin and his co-founders’ answer to the advertising space in India.

Machadalo works with traditional advertising spaces like bus stops, train stations, malls, parking spaces, and movie theaters. It also partners with community arenas like corporate parks, gyms, clubs, retail shops, salons, residential societies, and schools to collect around 200 data points about their customers. Using data science and their users’ ad inventory, they make campaigns directed at small local communities.

Humble beginning

Nitin Jain, co-founder of Machadalo.

In addition to the smaller campaigns the startup runs, Nitin says it also has potential to collect information for more widespread advertising. Hyperlocal ads are easier to change as more information is gathered, he explains. They provide more room for experiments and to collect different kinds of insights from different audiences.

Nitin’s own sense of exploration contributed to Machadalo’s genesis. He was heading up the western region operations of OYO Rooms when ads piqued his interest – he wanted advertising to help the company get more hotels. He wanted offline options as well for people who were looking for a room upon arrival at a railway or bus station. He and Anupam had been friends for years and talked over the problem in April last year. Anupam was handling big advertising budgets as EVP of Sharda University and was having trouble finding advertising agencies that could fulfill his hyperlocal advertising needs.

Pankaj, an analytics expert, and Naveen, an online lead conversion specialist, joined the team later. Machadalo launched in June last year.

Machadalo takes a more physical approach.

Team spirit