Anindya Datta. He is the CEO and Chairman of a company called Mobilewalla, a mobile consumer, audience platform company. Before Mobilewalla, he founded a company called Chutney Technologies where he was backed by Kleiner Perkins which was eventually acquired by Cisco Systems. He has been on the faculties of Georgia Tech, The University of Arizona and The National University of Singapore. He obtained his undergraduate degree many years ago and his MS and PhD degrees from the University of Maryland College Park.

Famous Five:
Favorite Book? – The New New Thing by Michael Lewis
What CEO do you follow? – Jose Mourinho
Favorite online tool? — Outlook and Gmail
How many hours of sleep do you get?— 5 ½ hours
If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – Drink less and study harder

Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:26 – Nathan introduces Anindya to the show
02:21 – Mobilewalla collects data for how consumers behave on mobile and processes it for mobile marketers—they have two products: mobile audience and raw mobile data
03:38 – When companies buy the audience, Mobilewalla provides the IDs and it is a one-time deal; the raw data is given on a subscription-basis which is paid monthly
04:28 – Right now the SaaS model is earning more in terms of revenue, but Anindya thinks this will change in December
04:57 – They are currently modifying the audience pricing to become a recurring stream
05:10 – They are planning to offer the data segments needed by a company and get a monthly payment for it
06:07 – Mobilewalla gets their data from different sources including the ad request system in mobile, they barter with the ad company in exchange for data
06:54 – They also put a pixel in an ad and obtain data from you as you browse
07:23 – This includes your location
07:57 – The company started with buying the information they can collect from other companies’ ads and then moved on to trading
08:32 – 2014 is their first revenue year where they got $1 million from the cut of the media buy
09:10 – 2015 was also all media buys where they got $4 million
10:18 – They stopped media buying in June 2016 and played a key role in the US presidential election—the revenue generated was $4 million: $750,000 in data and $3.25 million was from media
11:33 – The projection for this year is $5.1 million (all coming from data), but they have deals with companies that include media work
12:21 – Mobilewalla was one of the key data arms for a major party
12:33 – They created segments for evangelical Christians
13:31 – Anindya cannot share who they worked for but they can say the client was very happy with their work
14:10 – They raised their capital thru venture funding which are convertible notes worth $4 million; they have not yet raised a series B
15:50 – In May 2016, all the revenue was from data and they got $12,000. In June of this year, they hit $250,000—this is a 20x growth in 13 months
16:32 – In May 2017, they made $172,000
17:05 – On SaaS, they have 9 customers with subscription accounts and they pay from $8,500 to $41,000 a month
17:21 – The biggest chunk of audience revenue comes from Oracle, they get paid based on the segments that were sold
18:10 – In June, they were close to $100,000 from their mobile audience; there are over 250 organizations buying from them including Unilever and Procter and Gamble
19:12 – Ever since they started there are only two companies who have not continued working with them
20:01 – The company has two sellers – one in New York and one in Singapore
20:27 – The total team size is 38 with 3 focused on sales acquiring new clients; the average sales cycle for a SaaS client is 45 days
21:21 – There is zero variable marketing spend for the company
21:51 – The company headquarters is in New York and the US team is located in New York and Atlanta where the US engineering team is based
22:12 – The US team size is 10, the Singapore team size is 12, and the rest is based in Calcutta, India
24:21 – The biggest amount of money they generated during the election was the “get out to vote or GOTV” – they monitored every polling booth in a certain number of states and they were able to tell the ground team who voted and who did not
25:04 – During the election their data was acquired in real time
27:15 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:
Invest in a business that can bring in profit; this will give you the capital you need for your other businesses.
Data is king.
You CAN barter with other companies to reduce your spend on marketing.

Resources Mentioned:
The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

766: This Company Used Evangelical Christian Mobile Data to Influence US Elections

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