Can we think of a world without ads? Before high-end digital technologies took over, people came across random product promotions, from the latest luxury cars to get-rich-soon investment schemes. Of late, that scenario has changed. If one is browsing healthy recipes right now, all things fitness and health are bound to pop up on the screen for the next few days. It is a powerful reminder that brands today use hyper-personalised marketing to reach their target audiences via trusted platforms.

However, a fundamental challenge persists. Most of these personalised ads residing within the internet’s walled gardens (closed ecosystems created by tech giants) fail to engage with the vast audience on the open internet. Marketing campaigns on closed ecosystems cannot reach their true potential for another reason. Those platforms not only curb audience reach but also restrict access to performance data, making it difficult for advertisers to refine their strategies.

Mumbai-based madtech (martech adtech) startup Mobavenue is helping digital-first brands tackle this challenge. While its hyper-personalised solutions balance user privacy and marketing effectiveness, its unified programmatic media platform offers marketers greater control over operations, deeper insights into customer behaviour and more precise targeting. By 2024, the startup emerged as a leading player in the madtech space, leveraging AI and first-party data to drive results.

In an exclusive conversation with Inc42, Mobavenue CEO & MD, Ishank Joshi discussed the venture’s growth, its push into new technological frontiers and its roadmap for expansion and innovation. Here are the edited excerpts from the interview.

Inc42: How did Mobavenue evolve from a digital marketing agency into a full-stack madtech platform? What caused the pivot?

Ishank Joshi: Mobavenue is not new to structural changes. We have always made strategic pivots, solved customers’ problems and focussed on bootstrapping for greater control.

Our journey began in late 2017 as a boutique and bespoke digital agency. Google and Meta were used to start with, besides programmatic media, and ASO (app store optimisation) solutions. That agency was a great place........

© Inc42