Adtech Firm Fork Media Acquires Majority Stake in Audio Advertising Platform Rappio

Digital ad-tech company Fork Media has acquired a majority stake in Rappio Advertising, a startup that has a unique platform for digital audio advertising.

Rappio, founded in 2016, is a platform that enables brands to use their audio advertising formats, like ad jingles, promos, announcements, etc. to be played back as ringtones on end-user smartphones. Users can select from a variety of “ad ringtones” provided by Rappio and set it as their ringtone. Users are incentivised each time their phone rings playing out an ad tune.

Fork Media has a slew of innovative native advertising and premium advertising products that are integrated on top tier publishers in India, UAE, Indonesia and Singapore.  With the acquisition of Rappio, the company plans to introduce audio-based advertising at scale using its large inventory of premium publishers and create new avenues for brands.

Speaking on the deal, Nirav Shah, co-founder of Rappio said: "Fork Media and Rappio have a common vision for innovating and driving the advertising experience through alternate inventories in the digital medium. With their experienced leadership, innovative products and proven expertise, we think it’s a perfect fit to take Rappio to the next level”.

Speaking on the deal, Samar Verma, Founder and CEO of Fork Media said: "At Fork Media, we have always believed in collaborating with the best minds in the ad-tech space and have been able to deliver many differentiated offerings to brands through our past acquisitions. We believe Rappio can cause a disruptive opportunity for brands to take their radio spends into the digital medium with high degree of measurability, targeting and transparency”.

Nirav Shah will head the business division within Fork Media as CEO and Founder of Rappio.  Rappio will operate out of Fork Media’s Mumbai headquarters and will leverage Fork Media’s sales and technology teams.

Founded by Samar Verma and Upen Rai in 2013 and incubated at Mumbai-based, Rishi Khiani-led digital media and consumer Internet incubator Ant Farm, Fork Media, through its flagship platforms, provides a suite of native advertising solutions for publishers that enables them to activate, deploy and manage ad placements across media properties. Fork Media is headquartered in Mumbai with offices in Gurgaon, Bangalore, Dubai, Singapore and Indonesia.

Rappio Partners with Mobile Performance Marketing App Pocket Money

Rappio, a free recharge mobile application, has announced to enter into a partnership with Pocket Money, a performance marketing mobile app that allow users to earn money for discovering & exploring apps. With this partnership Rappio will be able to penetrate more in audio advertising with 160 times more reach than before.

Currently installed by 50 thousand users, Rappio offers a recharge every time the user gets a phone call. Leading to a daily average of 1 lakh ringtones played across their user base. Rappio has also done POC’s for major brands in India.

As the market for smartphone users is widening, mobile applications, too, are catching pace. This increase in user base has resulted in the advent of new mobile apps, collaborations and acquisitions. One such recent entry into the turf of collaborations is Mobile Application Rappio with Pocket Money. Rappio announced collaboration with Pocket Money which will give them the advantage of high reach with 9 Million Plus installs of Pocket Money & on the other hand Pocket Money will be able to provide one more channel for user engagement.

Rappio and Pocket Money will leverage this collaboration in terms of increasing their visibility in the Indian Advertisement market. Rappio will be able to promote more advertisers interested in brand marketing through audio after this partnership with the reach they are getting with Pocket Money

Nirav Shah, the founder of Rappio, holds six years of experience in the digital advertising sector. Three years of which he has exclusively worked in the mobile advertising sector. Commenting on the announcement, he described the partnership as an opportunity for Rappio to grow as a startup. “Rappio is very proud to be associated with Pocket Money. Rappio will leverage this partnership to increase its reach and thus establish itself with the Indian advertisers. This partnership is important to us as a startup and will help increase our visibility in the market.”

Describing this collaboration as a unique strategic alliance, the co- founder of Rappio, Mr Sahil Mehta, quoted saying, “We are really excited about this partnership, it is a unique one, since both Pocket and Rappio are app based incentivized model and in spite being in same space with a thin line of difference, we have collaborated to merge our strengths and to acquire the major gammot of the mobile advertisement space.”

Mr Yu Ishida, Business Head - Pocket Money also quoted saying “While the partnership will be beneficial to both the platforms, users too will get major benefits from this union”. They can scout for offers, shop, spend and earn money all at the same time. The mobile applications market will profit majorly with this union especially with the ever-growing demand of such apps.

Speaking more about the partnership, Mr Ankur Arora, Head Corporate Strategy & Planning said that this partnership will be mutually beneficial for both as Pocket Money users will get more engagement mean through this. We will test the beta version with Rappio integrated & this feature of Rappio should be available to all the users of pocket money in March after a successful BETA test.

This App Lets You Earn Free Recharge Every Time Your Phone Rings

A majority of us often get irritated when our phone rings and keep it on silent most of the times, but what if I told you that you now have an opportunity to earn free recharge every time your phone rings. Sound too good to be true, right? But, Rappio, an app by a Mumbai based startup is actually making this almost unbelievable scenario possible.

Rappio is basically a mobile audio advertising platform in which a user earns money on every incoming call where the ringtone is replaced by an ad jingle.

One can even earn a free mobile recharge by inviting friends to download Rappio, the Free Recharge App. If you're thinking the app is only gold for people with postpaid connections, then you're wrong. You can even let Rappio pay your postpaid bills by letting it customise your phone’s ringtone. Once you sing up for an account on the app, you will get greeted with a cool ringtone every time along with a free recharge. What's the icing on the cake is that the app also provides its users opportunity to win more prizes by participating in their weekly contests.

How to use Rappio

1. Install the Android app and register for an account.

2. Once registration is done, you will be asked to select the ringtones of your choice to get free recharge.

3. Set the priority of ringtones to get the free mobile recharge.

4. On every incoming call, you will hear a ringtone and you will earn free recharge.

5. Once you have accumulated some significant amount, you can redeem for free recharges or pay your phone’s bill on the Redeem page.

The app has almost all popular operators like Airtel, Vodafone, Reliance, Tata Docomo, Tata Indicom, Idea, Aircel, BSNL, MTNL, Uninor etc. on board, so you need not to worry if your operator is going to participate in the app's service.

Rappio's team of four founders, Nirav Shah, Ishan Doshi, Sahil Mehta, and Anuj Shah, is an interesting mix of experience, entrepreneurs mindset and young minds. Out of the 4 friends, 3 are hardcore techies, while Nirav Shah is the business brain behind the startup.

Launched in April this year, the startup's mobile app has been able to garner Over 40K downloads and more than 100K daily ringtone plays. The unfunded startup plans to increase these numbers to upto 1 million downloads in next 6 months with a daily gross revenue of 3 lakhs.