It has been six years since Sharad Lunia identified a gap in the market and found its solution in his first of its kind venture ReleaseMyAd. In 2009, after a stint in New York with Microsoft’s digital Advertising Solution Group, Lunia returned to India with a goal.
“I noticed that in India, newspapers were very widely circulated and still very relevant. But the process of placing ads in papers was a tedious, inefficient process.” He found that while there were innumerable people who wanted to place anything — from a matrimonial ad to obituaries and recruitment notices in papers, each ad required a lot of back and forth and confusion before results were delivered.
“I was using my experience in digital advertising and trying to make this process more efficient”, he says, adding that this was around the same time that travel had moved online in earnest, with most air and railway ticket bookings being carried out on websites instead of ticket counters. ReleaseMyAd would bring the world of newspaper advertising online, making things easier for both individuals as well as small business ventures looking to place their ads in papers.
Today, ReleaseMyAd has been active for six years and its success has spelled competition. Back when it started, it was the only platform offering such a service. Today, there are others and some, Lunia claims, almost a complete replica of the original.
“This proves that our website has worked and also that there is a market for such a service”, he says. In 2009 though, Lunia wasn’t so sure andstarted with a small test run. “We launched the website on Valentine’s Day in 2009, and before that, we ran a two-week promotional campaign on Facebook, where we invited people to wish their friend or partner through newspaper ads using our platform. It was a way of checking if there was a market we could tap.”
Sure enough, the campaign resulted in 12 people using the service on Valentine’s Day and this spelled possibilities for Lunia.
ReleaseMyAd today makes placing classifieds in papers significantly easy, having tied up with over 198 major newspapers across the country, in which users can place different categories of classifieds and display advertisements. It also has expanded to include cinema advertising, collaborating with over 7,000 cinema halls allowing a user to book both audio and mute format ads. Through the website, one can also book radio spots and create customised jingles for a campaign in 24 FM stations across 86 cities and in 16 languages.
Its own radio channel, ReleaseMyAd.fm further serves as an online platform for radio campaigning. Lunia adds that ReleaseMyAd is also one of the few companies in India that Google has partnered with to get the small and medium enterprise sector’s advertisement spends online and it offers them solutions to their special requirements, advising them on the advertisement campaigns, strategies, options, and more.
While the goal remains to cover all major newspapers of the country, ReleaseMyAd, with its current number of tie ups, covers over 98 per cent of newspaper readership in India. These tie ups became, Lunia says, a little easier for him given his family’s background in advertising. “So when we started out, we already had a certain relationships with clients already. Even so, we had to convince papers that we would be delivering on both value and quantity as well as convince advertisers that we would offer them quality.”
Along with pre-existing templates clients can choose from introducing their own customisation, ReleaseMyAd offers its own creative team in case of a client needing his or her advertisement designed.
“Today, should an educational institute in Jharkhand needs to place a notice that has pan Indian reach, he can use our platform to do so.”
Today, Lunia’s team is 75 strong and has already catered to lakhs of customers, reporting a turnover of 14 crore. “We are constantly looking to expand, and make the process easier, and better, for our users.”
