PayTunes raises investments, led by IAN and CAN

PayTunes, a mobile advertising platform that aims to change the way of mobile ad delivery, has raised investments close to half a million dollars in a pre-series A round. The investments were led by PayTunes’ existing investor CIO Angel Network (CAN), Indian Angel Network (IAN) and Apurva Parekh from Pidilite in the current round. Members from IAN will join the company board for mentoring the team. 

Founded by Divya Pratap Singh, Rakesh Sehgal — both are batchmates from IIT Delhi — and Gaurav Tiwari in July last year, PayTunes provides advertisers and brands a targeted medium to reach mobile consumers through audio visual advertisements. Team was recently joined by Amit Naredi as a co-founder and Chief sales officer who was working as a regional sales head in Mumbai for My FM. Earlier PayTunes had raised $100,000 from CAN in September last year.

“Conventional mediums like TV and Radio lack control in terms of targeting campaigns to their target users and exposure of the ad. We are giving an entirely different and fresh method of mobile advertising, other than static banner ads which are already in practice,” said Divya Pratap Singh.

The company plans to expand the team, and hire more talent for sales and marketing through investments. It also plan to integrate ‘ads on Caller-tune’ feature to increase the platform’s reach multiple times and become more lucrative for advertisers.

Commenting on the investment, Vishal Khare, lead IAN investor said, “Currently most of the branding spend goes in traditional media such as TV, Radio and Print. PayTunes is building an alternate medium in the branding domain, which still manages the biggest chunk of advertising spend.”

Another IAN investor Rajeev Arora said that in today's never ending race to acquire customers, Paytunes creates a unique channel for Companies to reach and communicate with their audience.

Currently, PayTunes is working with more than 25 advertising agencies across India and has run campaigns for brands like Nissan motors, Jabardast HIT FM, Vodafone, Saavan.com, Amazon and others.