Startup Story #31: YuktaMedia, Powering Revenue with Ad-Tech

“It is a marathon out there,” says Aditya Bhelande, founder of YuktaMedia, when asked about running a startup in a competitive environment. YuktaMedia started in 2014 and operates in the field of advertising technology. Their clientele range from advertising agencies to publishing houses for which they run the ad-operation services, revenue management, testing creative, campaigns and most importantly collect data from social media and analyse it to identify better supply partners.

“We integrate with about 50 odd systems in advertising and marketing technology, collect the data from there and then the publisher or agency can do their advertising or marketing on that platform. Getting the data isn’t the main part; it’s what you do with it that matters. Our customers can understand where the revenue is coming from and where they should put more focus. Earlier, all of this was manual but now it’s all digital. It’s a single source that allows these companies to identify different modes of revenue generation,” explains Bhelande.

Aditya Bhelande

With more than a decade’s experience as a product manager in companies like Oracle and Yahoo, this founder agrees that this has helped him gauge the opportunity and start the venture. “Through my experience at Yahoo, it was easy to determine that advertising technology is the next big thing. Companies are spending aggressively on digital marketing.” Digital marketing can really make a business stand out from the rest, especially when it is done correctly and fits in with the overall theme, going to sites such as myseosucks.com can help that become a reality.

Though based in the city, this startup has most of its clients from various parts of America, but any organisation having digital properties can use these services to monetise their business. But the challenges of running such a startup with diverse clients are many, “For a B2B company to handle clients abroad and manage them and provide good customer service is the first challenge. Having limited capital along with the need to build a brand, we took a different approach. We took on very few customers and made sure that those customers go on to become our brand ambassadors.”

Bhelande also mentions that getting experienced talent for a bootstrapped startup is another challenge he is facing. He lays emphasis on the fact that having a partner with the strength in handling the technical aspect is critical for any startup, and initially, he went to research into other digital marketing agencies similar to this company found at https://www.firstpagedigital.sg/ for example, to gain a better understanding of the technical sides to the startup. Deriving revenues from Saas (software as a service), he adds that it is important to keep a control on company expenses, “We have a decent office with all important amenities for our employees but it’s nothing fancy. There’s a tight check on expenses, so that we can create a pool for the future and give it back to our team.”

Setting up certain goals for the startup, Bhelande wishes to take this model to healthcare to be able to handle patient records and data of medical tests. He equates starting your own venture with being a parent, “You’re never really ready for it! Everyone has their own journey and you shouldn’t look at others. Your focus should just be on your customers and building a team. I am nothing without my team,” he remarks.

Vijayta Lalwani