Affle Strengthens Business Operations With Senior Management Hires

Affle, a Singapore-headquartered mobile media startup, has appointed Siddarth Correya and Lochan Kothari as the director for business development for Indonesia and associate director for business development for India, respectively.

Kothari who will be based in Mumbai, will be responsible for leading business development for the West and South regions in India, with particular focus to boost mobile advertising and marketing solutions for existing and new business partners.

Till recently he was with Webaroo Technologies (SMSGupshup) as the head of corporate sales, evangelizing the concept of social media on mobile. His prior experience includes roles in companies like Diageo, The Times of India Group, Zee Telefilms, 360 degrees and Indian Express.

To be based in Jakarta, Correya's mandate will involve forging strategic partnerships to leverage Affle's product penetration, increasing mobile ad sales representation business and driving the mobile marketing solutions offering for business partners and brand owners in Indonesia. Prior to Affle,  he was with Navteq Media Solutions as regional head - advertising sales (West and South). Correya has previously worked at One97 Communications, Nokia, Esprit and even Affle for a brief period.

Sankalp Mehrotra, regional director, business development, Affle, said, "We would want both Correya and Kothari to achieve and sustain a quantum growth in the coming fiscal year."

A month back, Affle appointed Rahul Roushan as head, content services who, previously ran the news satire website Faking News.

Last October, Affle raised over Rs 50 crore in its second round of funding from existing investor D2 Communications Inc., a joint venture between Japanese telco NTT DoCoMo Inc. and ad agency Dentsu. Till now, Affle has raised a total of $20 million in funding from various investors including a previous round of $5 million from Microsoft in 2008.