The two founders believe that there is a $100 billion opportunity in the MarTech space that’s not being correctly addressed at this moment in time — an industry whose incumbents are either IT services firms, handicapped without complete marketing context, or traditional advertising networks, who’re currently playing catch up through inorganic buy-out strategies.
Rao had co-founded one of India’s first and top digital agencies, Webchutney, in 1999, which was later acquired by Japanese multinational media network Dentsu in 2013. While he continued to head Webchutney, it was in 2021 when he was appointed as head of the India unit of dentsuMB, the restructured global creative network of the company.
“Back in ‘99, I saw the need for brands to shift towards digital, maybe a tad too early, and decided to start one of the first digital agencies in India. Today, I get a constant sense of deja-vu while watching agencies not fully grasp the urgency with which they need to build their marketing technology services stack,” Rao told ET.
“Digital advertising surpassing TV spending across the world is the end of an era. But it’s also the beginning of a complex and constantly changing one, with the mar-tech landscape gaining significance. I do believe that, given the complexity that brands face, we’re about to see a giant wave of large-scale MarTech service providers built out of India. And with Punt, we want to get a serious head start. ”
The company will start with its headquarters and first delivery centre in Bengaluru, with key members of the founding team present in both Delhi and Mumbai. Over the course of the next few months, they will enter key partnerships with MarTech players and on-board a 30-member team.
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“Marketers are dealing with an increasingly complex set of products in their sales & marketing stacks to drive acquisition and retention. Most products are point solutions that specifically solve for analytics, attribution, communication, intelligence, automation, enablement and engagement,” added co-founder Sudan.
“Quite often, marketers do not build the skills in-house to leverage these products to their fullest extent or to ensure they work well with all the other products they are using. This leads to a dual problem — poor outcomes for the marketer and churn for the product provider. Punt will address this problem by building specialist skills to ensure brands can identify and implement the right products and drive outcomes with optimal utilisation of the mar-tech stack they have chosen.”
Much like in the 80s and 90s, when the ITES wave created gigantic opportunities for India and saw the emergence of large technology services firms, the two co-founders believe that the internet industry is at the cusp of a new era-an era where technology is penetrating deep into marketing teams and creating a need for specialist skills to succeed.
The company aims to be a specialist partner helping clients with their sales & marketing stacks with both new-age SaaS partners and the large cloud platforms of Google, Adobe & Salesforce.
Punt’s ambitions include servicing the North American/UK/ Middle East markets with delivery from India.
Sudan added that, while the focus is on getting Punt off the ground, the founders have had some conversations with many interesting entrepreneurs over the past few months.
“It might be slightly premature to discuss the details, but we’re certainly open to exploring growth in all forms. We’re entering the growing yet relatively nascent industry of mar-tech,” Sudan said.
The two cofounders are currently bankrolling the start-up but are in talks to raise seed funding.
“We are looking at closing a small round very soon and have commitments from a group of wonderfully sharp investors who are very bullish on the opportunity at hand. As for the future, absolutely, if there are folks reading this equally optimistic about the future of mar-tech and the disruption that’s happening right now, we’re always open to a conversation,” Sudan added.
