Komli Media hires new heads for engineering, products & global biz development

Online ad network and audience measurement provider Komli Media India Pvt Ltd has announced three appointments to its management team. Apurva Dalal has joined the company as VP and head of engineering from Google; Rahul Bhargava from American Express has joined as VP and head of products and Ashwin Puri from Vuclip has joined as VP and head of global business development.

While Dalal will be responsible for building and scaling the company's technology platforms, Bhargava will help enhance Komli's product vision across platforms including display, mobile, social and video interfaces. Puri will lead the company's global business development and strategic alliances group.

"These three key additions underscore the investment we are making to support our fast-paced growth," said Prashant Mehta, CEO of Komli Media. "I am really excited about adding this winning combination to our global leadership team and the added momentum it will bring to Komli," he added.

Dalal holds an MBA from the University of Dallas and a B.Tech in Computer Science from the Mumbai University. Prior to Google, he was working with eBay. Bhargava was VP/GM of digital payments at American Express, prior to joining Komli. Before that, he led the global merchant solutions team at PayPal. He has done his B.Tech from IIT Delhi, MS from the Carnegie Mellon University and MBA from Harvard Business School.

Puri is an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and did his graduation in Electronics & Telecommunications Engineering from Pune University. He has more than 12 years of experience in mobile and consumer space in the US and the Asia-Pacific region, and held business development roles at Sprint, VeriSign and Vuclip.

Komli Media, which raised $15 million in a funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners earlier this year, also struck a couple of inorganic expansion deals. It acquired Los Angeles-based ZestAdz, a mobile ad platform with offices in Des Moines, Iowa and Chennai, for an undisclosed sum. Komli also acquired Aktiv Digital, a Singapore-based online media firm for branding, lead generation and marketing, to further strengthen its reach in Asia. The ad network has over 20,000 publishers on board.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)