Mumbai Entrepreneur Promises To Take Mobile Ads Where Facebook and Instagram Cannot

Recently, Business Standard reported that in FY24, tech giants like Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and Flipkart generated over Rs 60,000 crore in advertising revenue and a projected revenue of over Rs 80,000 crore by FY28.

While this might seem like a big number, Shaji Thomas, the founder of CallPay, tells Startup Pedia that it’s not. 

He says, “The average reach of these platforms that generated thousands of crores in advertising revenue is only approximately 40% and the balance 60% is still unreached. The reason is simple: they have limitations. Not everyone uses every single one of these applications.”

He gives an example, “For instance, someone could be a regular customer of Amazon and not Flipkart. They might be an Instagram and Facebook user but not LinkedIn or vice-versa. So only the app that they use can convert them into a paying customer of the brands marketed on it. But the ads on the other apps that they do not use, cannot. This is the limited reach issue that I am trying to resolve.”

India has over 70 crore smartphone users, but a large chunk is still unreachable by brands because they do not use the platform that the brands are being marketed on.

Let's take a look at a significant comparison:

Out of approximately 70 crore smartphone users, close to:

• 40 crore use Flipkart

• 38 crore use Facebook

• 37 crore use Instagram

• 30 crore use Amazon, and 

• 0.13 crore use LinkedIn

Basically, these platforms generated Rs 60,000 crore in advertising revenue by just tapping into 40% of the average Indian smartphone user market. There still is a 60% market that remains untapped.

And that is exactly the opportunity that CallPay aims to reach. It promises to bring brands closer to a larger pool of customers than ever and incentivize people to allow these advertisements to show up on their smartphones.

It will not only give brands direct access to 100% of smartphone users in India but also, for probably the first time globally, this will act as a source of revenue for all smartphone users.

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HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Shaji Thomas has been a marketing expert for decades. He has handled marketing divisions from scratch in industries like aviation, alcohol, real estate, and FMCG, delivering tangible results to stakeholders. 

He is also someone who likes building things on his own.

“I started a marketing consulting firm in 2014 with a few of my friends, but it didn’t really work out. In 2018, I launched a herb-based functional drink, but COVID-19 ruined a lot of plans,” Shaji tells Startup Pedia.

It was during the pandemic that he realized that advertising was getting heavily bent towards mobiles and everyone was consuming a lot of data. From social media platforms to e-commerce applications, brands were everywhere, and the absence of street hoardings, newspapers, and print media was suddenly compensated for.

There was also a key gap - brands were simply unable to reach anyone who wasn’t a user of a specific social media or e-commerce platform. Also, the ads were, and are still, dependent on users accessing these platforms. 

Marketers also lose a lot of money because they have to pay-per-impression, view, click, etc on social media platforms.  A lot of time and resources are spent figuring out whether the target audience they’re sending the ads to is really loaded with the potential to convert or not.

Despite this, users are flooded with ads but they don’t get anything in return.

“That is when I decided to solve the above issues and introduce something that benefited every single unit in the advertising process—from marketing agencies and brands to the end customers,” Shaji says.

The questions he sought to answer were: “How will the brands reach anyone who does not access these platforms? Is there a way the ads can reach users even when they're not accessing the media platform?”

With in-depth market research and a core team of just three experts, working on app development, he finally launched CallPay in April 2024.

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CALLPAY: DISRUPTING MOBILE ADVERTISING

CallPay is the flagship brand of Niyosha Technologies Private Limited.

It's a new-age mobile advertising platform that integrates mobile ads with calls, and in turn, makes them rewarding for the end user. This approach enables brands to connect with their target customers in the most affordable and efficient manner.

The current market gaps:

1. Brands and marketers majorly rely on social media platforms for mobile advertising. This limits their reach and they have to spend exorbitant amounts of money on running advertisements. 

2. Customers remain flooded with ads (relevant and irrelevant) but have never received an incentive for letting these apps appear on their screens and blocking their regular flow of content on social media. This makes them look at ads as a disturbing element that they just have to make do with.

The CallPay solutions:

1. CallPay has integrated phone calls with mobile advertisements. It gives marketers and brands access to 100% of the smartphone users in India. This, any day, beats the current reach that they get with social media. 

2. CallPay works in a 24-hour format. It reduces the digital marketing spending of brands by up to 70% and also provides them with hyper-local targeting features based on PIN codes. This enhances the efficiency of their ad campaign by multi-folds. 

3. CallPay looks to convert mobile advertisements into a rewarding feature, from the disturbing element that they are considered now.

How it works:

CallPay offers a unique concept of Multiple Views Per Day. 

Under this, brands sign up with CallPay, and zero down on the number of users they want to target and reach in a day. The ad is then repeatedly displayed on the customer's mobile phone every time they make or receive a call. 

CallPay significantly brings down the marketing costs that brands have to incur while running ads because it simply eliminates the concepts of pay-per-view, pay-per-impression, and pay-per-click.

Shaji says, “For B2B customers like brands and marketing agencies, we follow the pay-per-user-per-day model. This brings down the marketing costs but still gives the brands the benefits of unlimited ad visibility at no extra cost.” 

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COVERS YOUR PHONE BILL FOREVER

Shaji Thomas boldly claims that under standard conditions, which is seeing over 6 to 7 unique ads in a day, the user of CallPay will never have to pay their phone bill in their entire life! “Direct cash rewards is the value we as a technology company, want to create for our customers,” he says.

Users simply have to sign up on the CallPay app, register themselves, add a UPI bank ID, and make CallPay the default phone call application. 

Apart from the slashed marketing costs and increased reach for brands and the real cash benefit for customers, CallPay has a deeper purpose. 

It is increasing customer engagement and ensuring a ‘hammering’ effect that every brand aims to develop with its advertising campaign. 

Shaji explains, “Imagine there's a newly opened gym or a cake shop or a salon in an area. The brand knows that its primary customers are restricted to their location’s PIN code. They can now choose for hyper-local targeting and CallPay will ensure that their ads are shown to users located in that specific PIN code only. Imagine the kind of hammering it gives to your brand. It'll become hard to ignore and a ripple effect of tangible conversions can follow.”

LOOKING AHEAD

While CallPay is an early-stage startup at present, it has already garnered a user base of close to 1 lakh on the Google Play Store. The app is seeing an average growth of 10,000 users every month, projecting a total of 1.5 lakh users in FY24-25. 

Shaji signs off by saying, “As a mobile advertising platform, CallPay will change mobile advertising forever. We are also changing how the concept of ads is perceived by the end users because we are making them a source of revenue.”

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