Japan’s FreakOut opens new subsidiary in India to expand digital marketing on smartphones

GURUGRAM: Japanese adtech company FreakOut Holdings, headquartered in Tokyo, has opened a new subsidiary, FreakOut Technology Private Limited in Gurugram, Haryana. This is FreakOut’s first base in South Asia, and the office is expected to concentrate on starting native ad platform business in India.

The FreakOut group has promoted global development centered on the native advertising platform business with FreakOut Pte. Ltd. (Head office: Singapore, Representative: Tomohiro Yasukura) as headquarters for overseas business. Since 2015, the first native advertising platform in Southeast Asia has been released, we expanded our partners mainly around premium media in each country, and now we have grown into a native advertising platform that more than 700 overseas advertisers use.

Commenting on India’s subsidiary, Yuzuru Honda, Global CEO of FreakOut Holdings, said, “Within the Asian region, we have bases in 8 countries, and today we have launched our new Indian office in Gurgaon. Unlike other Asian countries, in India, our business strategy is investment and M&A of the Indian domestic technology venture in parallel with our own product sales. We have invested in Indian ad-tech companies and marketing-tech startups, since before opening the office in India. Now we have an office in India, we are ready to settle down for sourcing strategy, make a move to M&A, and establish a presence in India.”

India with a population of 1.34 billion is the world's second largest population and it is expected to surpass China by 2022, which is currently No.1 in the world. In addition, India’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) in 2016 stood at the 7th place globally, maintaining an extremely high economic growth rate of about 7% over the previous year.

Indian smartphone users who are the second largest in the world, China being No.1, exceeded 300 million users for the first time in 2016. Shipments of smartphones rose 18% over the previous year, far exceeding the world average of 3%. On the other hand, smartphone penetration rate is still low compared with other countries including China and the US. Smartphone manufacturers from around the world are focusing on the Indian market because of immense potential of further market expansion expected in the future.

In addition, with the spread of Internet communication and smartphones, the digital advertising revenue is steadily increasing. In 2016, the advertisement volume of digital advertisements as a whole increased by 28% compared to the previous year, especially mobile advertising which saw a 100% increase. By 2020 compared to 2016 the digital advertising as a whole is expected to grow by 2.5 times with mobile advertising growing by about 5 times. Owing to all these market analytics data, FreakOut India aims to provide native advertising platform solution to the Indian advertising market, which continues to grow remarkably, centering on smartphones, and the company intends to maximize advertisement effectiveness and media revenue.