Cuberoot is helping companies leverage the power of data to fast-track business growth

Gurgaon-based startup Cuberoot offers audience insights to let advertisers make data-driven decisions on marketing spends. Set up in 2015, the startup has crossed Rs 1 crore in revenue.

Six years ago, Flipkart began a wonderful journey. Its engineers began building their own cloud-based systems and indigenous applications. They also built a customer insights technology that enabled them to understand their customers better. Today they are looking at identifying the highest spenders and influencers on their platform because data offers insights in to a goldmine.

Data, experts say, will talk if you’re willing to ask the right questions. The importance of data in today’s times can’t be stressed enough. But it’s important to remember that on its own data is just facts and figures; it becomes usable information after it has been processed to add context, relevance and purpose.

Cindi Howson, in her 2007 book Successful Business Intelligence, writes that the average manager spends two hours a day looking for data. It’s the ability to analyse and act on this data that’s progressively gaining more importance. That explains the need for data to be sorted and organised to better understand consumers in the digital world.

Enter Gurgaon-based Cuberoot Technologies, a SaaS-based Data Management Platform (DMP) that helps companies including brands, agencies and publishers to leverage the power of their data and reap actionable audience insights to fast-track their business growth.

Cuberoot helps businesses understand their audience better by leveraging the power of data analytics to “make the right business decisions about their marketing spends and reach out to ideal customers in the best possible manner”.

Cuberoot was founded by Atul Soni, Sandip Kumar and Nishith Srivastava, who met through common friends and realised their love for data. They set up their company in April 2015.

Cuberoot’s services are segregated based on the requirements of marketers and publishers.

Atul, the co-founder of Cuberoot, says, “Cuberoot allows marketers to utilise its already existing third-party custom segments to run marketing campaigns on a primary and re-targeting basis.” He says publishers can leverage the platform for content targeting and customisation.

“This can also help in increasing their revenue by optimising yield of their advertising inventory,” he says.

Creating awareness about data management

A data management platform is a bunch of algorithms that are able to quantify objectives with qualitative study and analysis.

However, there are several challenges, including:

- Limited awareness amongst marketers and publishers about DMPs.

- Incoherent data-led strategy: Indian companies are yet to use data.

- Data sharing anxiety because of fear of losing control.

- Overall migration from manual media buying to programmatic channels.

Since there are multiple possibilities with the DMP, it can be confusing and difficult to execute on a single and well-defined strategy. To tackle these concerns and to educate stakeholders to understand the category better, Cuberoot undertakes free demo sessions through its “Schedule a Demo” awareness drive.

“Our focus is to enable clients to identify the use cases, which can be phased in accordance with their marketing objectives. A clear strategic framework is necessary to set oneself up for success with the DMP,” Atul says.

The business model

Cuberoot has a couple of business models as a part of its go-to-market strategy.

Atul says, “We offer ‘product deployment’ as well as a ‘managed services’ operating model depending on the integration appetite from client to client.”

He says in a managed services scenario the company offers a mapped and segmented audience profile for brands to target desired consumer profiles. Here, the company works on a premium basis compared to market rates because of the rich intelligence brought into the process of business insights. In the product deployment model, the company charges an annual maintenance charge and sets it up for the company to decide what it wants to do with its data.

From a scalability perspective, Cuberoot is currently working full throttle to acquire newer clients and data partners to strengthen its product offering.

“The focus right now is to capture a significant chunk of the market and have as many actual product use cases as we can,” Atul says.

Enabling data-driven decisions

According to eMarketer, paid media advertising outlays worldwide will increase 7.3 percent in 2017 to $583.91 billion. Growth will be roughly on par with previous estimates, and spending will rise at a steady pace throughout the forecast period, driven by increased investments in digital and mobile ads.

The programmatic digital advertising market is around Rs 1,400 crore of the total Rs 7,000 crore online ad spends in the market with an expected year-on-year growth between 25 and 30 percent.

Atul Jalan, founder of Manthan, a $100 million analytics company, says, “Every CEO wants to know how data is helping him make better decisions and there are several companies going after this market.”

Cuberoot is competing for the same share of pie with other DMP companies targeting marketers and publishers.

Companies like Near, Sociomantic, AdRoll and Vizury have already built such platforms. According to a study conducted by 9Apps, an average Indian user installs 32 apps. This number is more than enough for marketers to target users and display various types of ads in the app. In-app advertising is becoming more popular among e-commerce, BFSI and entertainment segments as it offers ample scope and options to tap into the mobile user base. This is where Cuberoot comes in, promising a better bang for the brand’s buck.

Cuberoot currently has six paying customers in the e-commerce, telecom and BFSI industries. The company has crossed Rs 1 crore in revenue with an investment of less than Rs 50 lakh. In the near future, Cuberoot is targeting a 100-million audience base with a reach on 25 million unique devices. The goal is one: to turn data into information, and then insights.