Up Close and Personal

The concept of  MoMagic is innovative and a daring step to start even before the buzz and demand in the market. What was one defining moment for you as an entrepreneur which made you start MoMagic?
Defining moment as an entrepreneur was the having Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer and the third-largest information technology company by revenue as a strategic investor –partner to MoMagic in the year 2015.  (After having MediaTek as the strategic partner- investor.)
What made me drive on starting MoMagic: It is the desire and need to bring in differentiation amongst different handset companies.  More wide and varied content offerings to the end customer beyond the operator controlled scenario at that point of time.
Most importantly is the passion to do something for oneself and for the team.

Your business had a small beginning but now is well recognized across Asia. As a CEO of the company, what were the essential things to be taken care of before expanding your business? Please take us through your success journey.
Two critical things:
Readiness of the self and Readiness of the Team and acceptability.
Change in the mindset. Accept the changes required within self and team for the next level of goals, set for expanding and growth. Need to get experts in respective fields into the system and understand and work with them. Delegate and give the mandate to others when required, as the cost of failure gets high as you move up the growth and expansion graph. 

Success and journey are an ongoing process – I think JVs with leading brands in the business and sustained collaboration and growth in the alliance with majority of them in the last 6 years is a significant achievement.  And the expansion into new geographies and markets. 

Strengthening of the market position of MoMagic across all the 3 core channels of reach to the end user by 2014 and introducing our own SDK for 24/7 analytics and feedback.  

Investment and recognition by Foxconn in 2015 and successful transition to Online User acquisition with technological prowess from being pioneers in Factory preloads and leaders in offline –retail channel and from feature phones to smart phones and iOS.

Becoming the No1 offline user acquisition platform in India and launching of pickaboo.com in Bangladesh.

What are your views on India as a destination for Pro SME- Business Environment?
Undoubtedly, India today has the best offerings for the SME business environment to grow and expand. The proactive steps being taken by the GOI at the Policy level or in terms of launching new initiatives to boost the startups and SMEs is laudable and its for entrepreneurs to take optimum advantage of the offerings. 

How can an entrepreneur make their journey successful through digitization?
It’s difficult to talk about, just digitization as a means to a successful journey. Digitization according to me is one of the tools and just opens one more channel for market communication and reach.  At the end of the day, your product – service offering or the content –whatever be the case has to have that value proposition for it to survive the market competition and move up and digitization can be in todays context an important tool in the same.

Can you share an example where an organization has benefited majorly due to implementation of new modern marketing strategies?
Well, tweaking it a bit, would say new day improvised technological enhancements such use of AI that helped the company in bringing in increased streaming percentage of app from 25% to 65% in 4 months, resulting in increase in monthly active users and screen views and a giving total user base (unique activations) for this client app of 4M.

Please mention a few ‘To Do’s that ensures that someone who is on verge or thinking of expanding their business globally?
To DO for looking at expansion into global markets would include: market potential of those geographies and your business strengths to cater to them. Partner - enter a JV with the Group, which complements to your business strengths and matches your work ethos and mindset. The government policies and the overall business an economic environment. The edge, which you as a company will have by being an early mover into that market.

What are the most common things you find most businesses do wrongly?
Running after valuation – the number game.
Focus should be on the business and ROI - the journey

Can you enlighten us with some of the key takeaways on life or learning while you were growing as an entrepreneur? Any tip for our SMEs readers?

Positive attitude and approach. Patience. No bargain for hard work - focus and passion. Undeterred mindset during challenging times and ability to pivot to keep afloat during tough times when the business is dipping negative.  Interest of stakeholders to be of upmost priority for all times be it b2B or b2C.