Kratos.com: Startup focused on mobile ecosystem

In 2014, 68 million mobile phones were manufactured and now, in 2016,this figure has catapulted to more than 100 million devices. With this massive growth in production and cell phones being the new battlefield for advertisers, one startup called Kratos is helping advertisers leverage the cell phone user base to reach more consumers.

Kratos.com was founded with a focus on the mobile ecosystem and offers three pronged services- an advertisement platform, an integrated marketing platform, and white labeling solutions. The ad and integrated marketing platform enable advertisers to communicate with their target consumer base through mobile devices which include conventional consumer brands, e-commerce players and mobile VAS (value added service) players.

"Our ad platform employs a range of consumer parameters to target specific consumer sections, and offers real-time bidding capabilities to book ad space to advertisers," says Pradhan. The clients for the white labeling solutions are mostly publishers who have their own mobile websites and are looking to monetize the traffic on their sites or apps. Typical players include traditional media houses that have started focusing on the mobile ecosystem.

Founded by Naveen Bhandari, Upal Pradhan and Venkatakrishna T, in June 2013,Kratos has served more than 80 clients in the past two years which includes Snapdeal, Oxygen, Eros, Wynk music, Saavn, Shemaroo and ad agency OMD. The company gained revenue of Rs 5 crore in its first year of operation, 2014-15, and revenue hiked to Rs 15 crore in 2015-16. Kratos has now made a strategic shift to a demand-driven model that focuses on maximizing advertiser’s return on investment.

Kratos, which has staff strength of 37, faced two big challenges during its journey- finding the right talent to build the company and how to operate budgets.

"The salary scales were extremely high and prohibitive as we were competing for talent with large e-commerce players," says Bhandari, Co-founder, and Director. After realizing that job seekers in the city preferred to work for bigger companies, they decided to shift from Chennai to Bengaluru. The shift worked for the company, "Venkatakrishna heading our technology also made a big difference. Gradually, many talented youngsters, keen on being mentored by him, joined us," adds Bhandari.

The second roadblock was its operating budget. "We had to build our network based on our credibility and performance," says Bhandari. The founders began by targeting markets where they had had prior exposure. "We began with VAS (value-added services) players as clients, whom we had handled while managing Techzone and gradually built our base by word of mouth," Bhandari adds.

The startup is also planning to expand and is running pilots in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Vietnam. "We have worked with clients in these countries before and this gives us the confidence to take Kratos global by end-2017," says Pradhan.