Ad revenue boosting tool for web publishers AdPushup raises over $630K via LetsVenture

Delhi- and US-based AdPushup Inc., a startup that provides an A/B testing platform to enable web publishers and bloggers to create & test different ad placement, size and types to optimise their ad revenues, has secured $632,000 in funding from LetsVenture, an online platform that connects startups with accredited investors.

Those who participated in the round include Kima Ventures, Paras Chopra, founder of Wingify; Amit Ranjan, co-founder of SlideShare; Jonathan Boutelle, director (technology) at LinkedIn; Sachin Arora, principal data engineer and architect at Yahoo, Avlesh Singh, co-founder of WebEngage; Sameer Parwani, founder of CouponDunia; Zishaan Hayath of Powai Lake Ventures; Krishna Jha, partner at Telnet Ventures; Ashim Mehra, VP, Baron Capital; Ravi Srivastava of PurviCapital; Shubham Gupta, VP, Nomura; Vikram Kapur, partner at McKinsey & Company; and angel investor Sunil Kalra.

"A major chunk of the funds raised will go into building a team in India, while a portion of the capital will be used to set up a base in the US, where most of our marketing activities are happening," Ankit Oberoi, co-founder of AdPushup, told Techcircle.in.

AdPushup was one of the eight startups that showcased at the Techcircle Startup 2014 in Delhi in July this year. The startup had also made a presentation at Techcircle's weekly video show for startups, called TC Show Off.

The startup was founded in mid-2013 by two college dropouts -- Ankit Oberoi and Atul Agarwal. The duo had previously co-founded an information security services company called Innobuzz. AdPushup claims that its solution uses continuous optimisation to fight banner blindness. All this is done by using a simple visual editor and no programming knowledge is required. The company further says that it has a direct impact on users' top-line and has already enabled its users to generate additional revenue. According to Oberoi, average RPM (revenue per thousand impressions) uplift/improvement per participating website is 68 per cent.

Early this year, Delhi- and San Francisco-based Appiterate, a native mobile analytics and A/B testing platform for app developers and enterprises, had secured $500,000 in seed funding from SAIF Partners; Greg Badros, former VP (product & engineering) at Facebook; and Prashant Malik, former tech lead at Facebook and co-creator of Apache Cassandra.

LetsVenture is an online platform that connects entrepreneurs with investors. Recently, flipClass, an online marketplace for home tutors that also allows parents to check their kids' performance through the platform, raised Rs 1.5 crore (under $250,000) in funding from LetsVenture.