Skrilo: Mobile-Marketing Platform Plans to Penetrate in Regional Markets With Right Partners

Skrilo was conceived in late 2014. What started out as a bright spark in a meditative moment has today transformed into a comprehensive vision of creating a marketing and rewards platform. We started with an idea that we could make a difference to people’s lives if they could win big. In its MVP (minimum viable product) form, Skrilo offers an entitlement to win a bonanza at zero cost, in exchange for engaging with a brand campaign in a non-intrusive and voluntary manner. Our research suggested that there was no parallel, in the world of mobile marketing – globally! A large greenfield opportunity set the stage and we embarked on our journey.

Very focused on the product side in the initial stage, we have today built a compelling end-to-end solution for mobile marketing with multiple objectives in mind. From a user’s perspective, the concept has lent itself to a gamified engagement that is elegant, seamless and rewarding.

Founding date: Skrilo Limited was founded on 14th July 2015
Founder/ Founders name: Dr. Manish Sinha (ex McKinsey consultant and hedge fund manager), Mr. Gaurav Singh (with an in-depth product and services development experience – Adobe, CSC, Sapient, Infosys), Ms. Gunjan Diwan (joined in from American Express)

Startup Description:
Skrilo is a first of its kind, mobile-first B2C marketing and rewards platform, that effectively connects the brands and businesses with the end consumers. Skrilo, as a concept was born out of some simple observations on the mobile marketing industry.

1. Mobile marketing is pretty much 100% intrusive in nature. Whether you are playing a game, or on a social media platform, the ads try to capture the attention while the consumer is in the midst of something. Skrilo offers a paradigm shift from intrusive to non-intrusive marketing.
2. The world of any incentivized experience for a mobile user is highly fragmented and does not move the needle for the users at the margin. Skrilo aims to bring a series of innovative reward programs that have impact, makes it engaging and thereby create a one-stop shop rewards platform.
3. Finally, the problem of Ad Blocks is not unforeseen and Skrilo provides immunity against it

In summary, Skrilo is the solution against this backdrop of mobile marketing challenges. It provides a holistic marketing platform to a business/brand manager serving a diverse array of campaign objectives. At the same time, it wishes to provide a rewarding journey to the consumers in return for engaging with the brands.

How was it started?
The idea got jumpstarted when Skrilo’s principal founder and CEO, Manish bootstrapped the product development. He got early stage support from people with relevant experience including Anurag Gupta, a veteran in the advertising industry and Raj Shourie, a structured finance specialist. As goes with any idea and action, it attracts people, resources, and more ideas and what ensues is an alignment in the creative process.

Unique key features/ services:
Skrilo is both a targeted marketing and rewards platform.

For the brands and business, they can achieve their suite of marketing objectives via a “single click closed loop marketing system”. What this means is that the brands can decide and push their campaigns on Skrilo for a wide spectrum of objectives like brand awareness, assured engagement, coupons and offers, sales lead generation, survey, sampling etc. and the user can respond to that pushed stimulus in just one click – the click that closes the loop for the brand on their analytics dashboard.

Skrilo has a rewarding journey for the consumer. Our very first reward program that offers weekly bonanza opportunities to users at zero financial risk is a game changer. We are meaningfully impacting lives.

One winner said "Skrilo has helped him pay for his engineering tuition fees”; another one mentioned that they can now go for a four wheeler; and yet another said that she could now gift her parents with a memorable celebration on their anniversary. Real and meaningful stories like these are just on the cusp of ballooning.

How is it different from existing ones?
Any marketing solution today can be bucketed into two segments (i) an incentivized approach (think app download company’s in return for gratification) or (ii) a non-incent approach. Counter-intuitively, Skrilo falls in a new category of a hybrid approach. While, the Skrilo app offers an incentivized gateway for users to come to the app; the engagement with the brands is a non-incent one. This stems from the fact that an opt-out and opt-in offers the same reward outcome. The unbiased behavior of the consumer in opting in is highly sought after by any brand. This is a high quality user they are in search for! And Skrilo makes it possible.

Share with us your Current Funding Status?
Skrilo has raised north of 1.5 million USD in its seed stage and may initiate discussion for a Series A by the end of the year.

Tell us what Monetization model are you working with?
Skrilo's revenue source is the mobile marketing and advertising allocation of any business or brand. We have a pay as you go cost per assured click model, though there is bulk buying of inventory and performance based revenue for certain use cases. The app is totally free to the users.

What are your current Traction details?
Skrilo is a novel concept in the market. So it’s incumbent on educating as we grow. With 400k downloads and millions of assured views in a month, the consumer is learning to Skrilo. Brand managers are intrigued and several global MNC brands have already launched pilot programs on Skrilo.

What Future plans do you have in mind?
Skrilo has an aggressive growth strategy to capitalize on its strong foundation. Scaling up in India is the foremost priority. This market is on the inflexion point wherein both the growth in smartphones and data (supply side dynamics) and the need to allocate greater marketing budgets to the mobile strategy (demand side dynamics) is crying out for a fly-up in potential market opportunity. Leveraging our technology platform for a more regional offering is also on the cards and the company will be open to opportunities to penetrate new markets with the right partners.

Describe the Marketing plans and efforts put in by the firm?
Skrilo uses a combo of traditional and new age media channels for its marketing efforts. Radio and print coverage is what we have focused on in terms of traditional channels. Social media with an objective toward app downloads is the key focus on digital marketing.

Challenges faced while setting up the startup firm?
The biggest challenge is the clutter in the eco-system. Incentivized marketing, in its very narrow use-cases that exist, is a highly fragmented market. Secondly, the stigma attached to the word “incentivized” is an interesting one. Deep down, we believe that Skrilo has created a happy blend of incent and non-incent approaches, which seeks to exploit on the virtues of these two worlds.

Market size opportunities you are looking at?
A stab at sizing the market opportunity is most likely going to under-ball the number. As per market researchers the opportunity in India in mobile marketing is real. Smart phones in India are expected to triple from 200 mil devices to 650 million by 2020 or earlier. Mobile marketing spend is expected to multiply 7 fold from 175 mil USD to 1.3bn USD in the same period. For a player with regional / global aspirations, the opportunity is massive.