Mobile Ad Network Seventy Nine Gets Acquired By Gruner + Jahr India

Gruner + Jahr, which is Europe’s largest printing and publishing firm has acquired the Indian mobile ad-network SeventyNine. Gruner + Jar is a division of the Bertelsmann empire and is represented in India by NetworkPlay, a company that they acquired some months ago in March. SeventyNine will function as an independent business unit within NetworkPlay.

SeventyNine was launched the Smile Vun Group  in April  this year, shortly after NetworkPlay got acquired. The idea of the outfit was to focus on rich media ad inventory and newer ad technologies which leveraged video content and HTML5 to give a better user experience. Chirag Shah and Deven Dharamdasani are the co-founders of SeventyNine and will report directly to the board of directors. Three months after it started commercial operations in April, the startup reported growth by serving 700 million ad requests. Currently, Smile Vun Group says that SeventyNine serves 1.8 billion ad requests. Besides the ad-platform, it also has services like Predictive Analytics Engine and SeventyNine App Analytics Service for Android.

Manish Vij, Founder of the Smile Vun Group spoke about the development.

“SVG is committed to introducing path-breaking businesses in the digital media industry and accelerating their journey to success. Our seven months association with Seventynine has been extremely successful leading it to be the fastest growing mobile ad-network in India. Seventynine has great potential as a business and we are certain that its association with Gruner+Jahr will provide a global platform for the business to grow further. This alliance is the beginning of our relationship with Gruner+Jahr.”

Dr. Torsten-Jörn Klein, President, Gruner+Jahr International commented on the acquisition.

“The expansion of Networkplay in the mobile space through the acquisition of Seventynine is clearly following our strategic commitment to grow our mobile business in the Indian market. G+J believes that in the Indian market, one of the fastest growing digital markets, the mobile segment will gain increasing importance. G+J is looking forward to further expand in that area together with Networkplay and the Seventynine team.”

SeventyNine’s co-founders have also released a statement.

“We are excited about our association with Networkplay and being a part of the international Gruner + Jahr and Bertelsmann family. We would like to express our gratitude to Smile Vun Group for believing in our vision and goals and helping us grow at such a phenomenal rate. We are certain that association with Networkplay would be an impetus for our business and aid our objective of becoming the leading player in the mobile advertising space in India and beyond.”

This is G+H’s second digital acquisition in the country and represents an interest by the company to take advantage of the rapidly growing digital space in the country. The addition of SeventyNine gives G+H a mobile ad network which will help their India effort to scale sooner since mobile Internet usage is growing in the country and there are a growing number of companies who have recently stepped into the Indian mobile ad game. The Smile Vun Group recently launched Precision Match, a one of its kind data targeting and analysis platform.

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