Ad 2Pro: Around the world in 30 minutes
Five years from now, we see ourselves as a $100 million company with 250 customers and about 8,000 employees," says Gopal Krishnan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ad2Pro, which designs advertisements for publishers in the West using an offshore model.
Main markets:
Differentiator: Speed, low cost, low-touch solution that offers high quality creative outputs with minimum investment and operational concerns Customers: Has 25 customers, including some of the top publishers in the world Business: Pre-press design and production services for print and online media publishers in an offshore model First order: In June 2007, for just $924 Total income: Close to $10 million |
Sarath Naru, Founder and Managing Partner of Ventureast, a venture capital and private equity firm which invested $2.5 million in the company in 2008, says: "What we found attractive was the business model and the team."
Ad2Pro thrives on the need of publishers in developed markets to slash production costs as circulation and advertisement revenues shrink, and online competition increases. Founded by a few former LA Times executives and a serial entrepreneur, Ad2Pro has automated and integrated the creative and production processes into a webbased platform.
"We have quick turnaround time. Typically, we take anything between 30 minutes and 10 hours to come back," Krishnan says. This speed is the key differentiator. When an American customer hands over content for an advertisement to a newspaper, it sends it to Ad2Pro in India with a deadline.
Ad2Pro handles nearly half a million advertisements a year. About 20 per cent are "super express" delivery (30 minutes to two hours) and 30 per cent are "express" (between 2 hours and 6 hours).
