Exclusive: Appiness Interactive hires former O&M exec Adrian Odgers as chief marketing officer

Bangalore-based digital media startup Appiness Interactive Pvt. Ltd has hired former managing director of Ogilvy & Mather (Singapore) Adrian M Odgers as chief marketing officer.

Odgers will be working closely with Appiness' founding team on its recently launched non-residential accelerator programme christened Appy Hours.

"Adrian will work with the team to further develop the accelerator and help define its vision, strategy and organisational structure. He will help us promote our services to (venture capital/angel/seed) funds, accelerators and educational institutions and assist in selecting, mentoring and designing exit strategies," said Visakh Viswambharan, founder and CEO of Appiness Interactive.

In addition, Odgers will act as business partner for a select number of startups registered with the accelerator to mentor and advise them across digital marketing, growth hacking, business strategy, operations and digital transformation.

Odgers, who is also an angel investor, has worked with GE, Harrison Troughton Y&R and Tag Worldwide in the past. He is currently a non-executive board member at two Indian companies—food tech startup The Runaway Chef and software development firm Unifize.

Appiness Interactive was founded by Viswambharan in April 2012. His friend Sunil P Thomas later joined the company as co-founder. They recently promoted one of their early team members, Rigin Velayudhan, as another co-founder. A bootstrapped startup, Appiness today operates with a team of 70 people.

The startup launched Appy Hours in January this year. Appy Hours identifies startups in the domain of web, mobile and wearables to offer them services on mobile/web App UX, design, development and marketing until they raise institutional funding. It prefers startups in the 'social good' space, in addition to education and agro tech.

"We take a small equity, usually in the lower single digits to cover our most basic costs, and to have our skin in the game," Viswambharan said. "For example, if the overall cost of product development is around Rs 20 lakh, a startup could pay us a fraction of the amount, say Rs 5 lakh and offer us a stake for the rest."

The accelerator programme currently has six startups on board, of which, three have raised seed funding. It plans to help roll out at least 20 startups this year.

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