Because he has a mirror to the
online world

By Shreyasi Singh

Photograph by Subhojit Paul

Amar Goel’s recent entrepreneurial adventures aren’t for the faint-hearted. In the past 15 months, Komli Media, his digital media company, has been on a buying spree of sorts, acquiring five companies across Singapore, Australia and the UK. That’s an intense learning curve for any business especially one that’s just five-years-old. But Goel, who founded Komli to leverage the opportunities of a rapidly-growing world of online advertising, says it’s been a crazy, fun ride.

“Before I began Komli, I’d never done business in India, not even in Asia. I grew up in the US,” says Goel. “A year-and-a-half before we acquired Post- Click, I’d never even been to Australia. Now we have an office there. To see the world, travel to different places, work with different legal systems, and office cultures has been exciting,” says the 35-year-old.

Not that Komli’s growth is just geographic. It tots up some impressive numbers. Headquartered in Mumbai, Komli reaches 30 million unique users monthly, and works with more than 100 advertisers through 200 partner websites across Asia Pacific, North America and Europe.

Essentially, Komli helps marketers come up with targeted solutions online. Goel, who studied computer science at Harvard University and worked at Microsoft, Netscape and McKinsey before founding Komli, claims they’re already the third-largest player in digital advertising in India after Google and Yahoo.

A self-confessed “product guy”, Goel says Komli is driven by revolutionising targeted advertising. On the back of innovative products like ViziSense, their leading audience measurement and ad spends benchmarking platform, Goel says Komli can be a $500-million revenue company in the next five years.

ViziSense helps understand what’s really happening in the online ecosystem—tracking the fastest growing sites, understanding what women are doing online as opposed to men, and how often people visit banking site. “The digital lifestyle will explode over Asia Pacific. And we want to be there.” Goel personally seems well-equipped for the journey.

Komli Media is his third start-up. In 1995, he founded Chipshot.com, a golf e-commerce company when he was just 19. By the time he was 24, he’d raised $50 million for his venture. It’s an experience he leveraged well at Komli, for which he has raised $23 million in three rounds of financing from leading firms like Norwest, Nexus and Helion Venture Partners.

Goel is almost an entrepreneurship junkie now, he says, despite the many pain points—infrastructure woes in his beautifully done-up office in Mumbai’s Kalina, and the “super intense” war for talent. “But if I wasn’t building this company, I’d probably start another company.”

Next Story

	EMAIL THIS ARTICLE	PRINT THIS PAGE