IDG Ventures invest $4 Mn in Ozone Media

Bangalore: Realizing the future benefits, Venture firms are all set to invest money on Indian Online Advertising industry. In a latest move IDG Ventures, a global network of venture capital funds, invested $4 million in Ozone Media, a Bangalore based Internet Advertising Company. It is the ninth company in which the IDG venture investing in India.

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Ozone Media, a venture of Kiran Gopinath said, "It has over 100 network websites as its partners in a revenue sharing model. The company also claims more than 40 clients including such as HSBC, SBI, Yahoo!, Lenovo, Cleartrip and Citibank. The company grew by 150 percent in the previous fiscal."

This is the first round of funding by Ozone Media which intends to use the fund in increasing the number of its partner websites and strengthen its marketing strategy. Ozone's publisher base consisting of medium and small sized publishers with lack of infrastructure facilities, and the IDG Venture's investment would be for the development of such publishing base and to strengthen the network.

Ozone C Meenakshisundaram, Managing director, IDG Ventures India said that the company was looking at investing up to $5 million in companies in Internet and mobile payment space in India. "Many interesting start-ups have come up in the mobile payment space during the last one year. While some of them have already enjoyed the first round of funding, some are looking at the next round. We have seen about 7-8 companies both in Internet and mobile payment space, and can invest up to $5 million," he said.

Ozone differentiates itself in this space by providing better targeted solutions for industry verticals, and providing complete transparency and control over ad placement. Further, the company has accumulated a large volume of premium inventory, especially in regional language and video.

The Indian market for online advertising is estimated to be 450 crores currently, and is expected to grow to INR 2,000 crores over the next 3 years. Globally, ad networks account for more than 40 percent of display advertising spend on the internet, and help monetize the long tail of internet