Apps monetisation platform Pokkt ropes in Koovs' Manish Tewari as its co-founder & CTO

Mumbai- and Singapore-based Maiden Marketing Pte Ltd, the company behind Pokkt.com, an alternative monetisation platform for app developers and publishers, has appointed Manish Tewari, founder of Koovs, as its co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO).

An IIT Varanasi alumnus, Tewari had founded Koovs Marketing Consulting Pvt Ltd, a lifestyle e-com venture listed on London's junior stock market AIM, in 2010. While Tewari had exited Koovs last year, he still holds a significant minority stake in the firm. Previously, he had worked at Minglebox as its product development engineer. He had earlier also worked at Ketera Technologies as a senior software engineer.

Pokkt was founded in July 2012 by Sharma, former CEO (digital business) of Reliance ADA, along with Vaibhav Odhekar and Sharad Ingule. An MBA from Lancaster University in the UK, Sharma had earlier also founded Wopshop, an e-com venture for toys. This stopped operations some time ago. In the past, he was involved with creation of Zapak.com and is also a founding member of Indiatimes.com. His partner Odekar holds an MBA from IIM Lucknow, and previously worked at ICICI Bank and Zapak.

In addition to Tewari, Pokkt has also announced the appointment of Nimit Panpalia as its head of global developer acquisition; Abhijit Kunder as its global product head; Sanjay Vasudeva as consultant for global sales; Vivek Manghnani as India business head for Pocket Money; and Nishant Kavi as head of developer acquisition in India.

What is Pokkt?

Pokkt (pronounced as pocket) is basically an additional way for app developers and publishers to make money. It provides software development kits (SDKs) to them to solve the challenges of discovery and monetisation. The SDKs are available on Android, iOS and Windows platforms.

Game developers and publishers can monetise their paid content by downloading an app, filling up a survey or watching a video.

For consumers, who want to purchase digital content on web or mobile, Pokkt provides an opportunity to do it for free by offering multiple alternative payment tools like watching videos, subscribing to services, installing applications and participation in surveys.

For advertisers, Pokkt provides multiple engagement tools to reach out to millions of active users both on web and mobile. The firm charges a fee from these advertisers, which is its main source of revenue.

The startup also runs a B2C platform called Pocket Money, which helps app developers acquire customers in a targeted way. It is basically a reward-based ad platform where users can consume any advertising, and in return, they get some rewards.

The startup was part of the inaugural batch of GSF Accelerator. In July last year, it had raised $2.5 million in its Series A round of funding from Singapore-based VC firms Jafco Asia and SingTel Innov8, with participations from existing investors, including Jungle Ventures and K Ganesh, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Portea Medical.