AdNear raises $19 mn in Series B funding

AdNear, a location intelligence company, today announced it has raised $19 million from Telstra Ventures and Global Brain as part of its strategic plan to expand into multiple new markets. Both its existing investors, Sequoia Capital and Canaan Partners, also participated in the capital raising round.

AdNear, which has offices in India, has developed insights from anonymous device users across Asia Pacific using their historical location footprint and real-world offline data. Leveraging these unique insights, the company is able to programmatically send relevant ads to mobile audiences on behalf of advertisers using its proprietary real-time bidding platform. It has rapidly grown its client base to include 100s of marquee brands such as P&G, Woolworths, Audi, Unilever, BMW, Ford, Samsung, IKEA, and Adidas.

Mark Sherman, Managing Director at Telstra Ventures said, “Mobile advertising continues to grow rapidly across Asia Pacific. Telstra Ventures recognises the value that AdNear’s probabilistic, data-driven approach brings to advertisers and we’re excited to be able to provide capital to accelerate the expansion of AdNear’s operations.” Mark Sherman will now join the AdNear Board of Directors.

Anil Mathews, CEO of AdNear said, “Our proprietary technology enables us to help major brands across Asia Pacific fine-tune their consumer targeting by having access to real-time location intelligence. Location data-driven insights are extremely powerful and marketers can use these data points to understand consumer behaviour and also build customized campaigns as per their target audience.” Mohit Bhatnagar, managing director, Sequoia Capital said, “AdNear has been focused on analyzing location data at scale to understand user behaviour, and the response from clients across markets has been phenomenal. We believe that markets such as Japan present significant opportunities for AdNear’s technology.”