An app for small businesses to create ads: Pune entrepreneurs’ brainchild

In June 2020, as Covid wiped out businesses, two Pune-based entrepreneurs came up with an app that could be used by MSMEs (medium and small-sized enterprises) to create ads for social media. AdBanao, the brainchild of Sumeet Katariya and Narendra Firodia, has been downloaded by two million users since then.

The app boasts one million creatives, such as GIFs, jingles, images, and fonts, in English and Hindi as well as Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, and Telugu.

Digital advertising, as per the Dentsu India report, has grown 39.50 per cent and is contending with TV advertising. AdBanao is enabling local businesses to enter the digital advertising space.

AdBanao, which had an initial investment of over 1.5 crore, earns a revenue of Rs 3.5-4 crore annually. “We are present in 90-100 industries, such as real estate and retail among others. Once, we had a politician who wanted help with branding,” shares Kataria.

“We were inspired by Canva, a design platform from Australia used to create graphics and presentations. Canva is doing great globally but we felt that it would not be easy for SMEs in India to understand. We realised that we were on the right track when we got a positive response in the initial couple of months with one lakh downloads,” he adds.

AdBanao is also curating content with a focused approach. For instance, with restaurants, it takes a micro-perspective. “We have more than 50 sub-industries in the restaurant industry alone. Overall, this is helping us gain more users with time,” Katariya highlights.

MSMEs are also vulnerable to economic instability, especially in the post-COVID market. The restaurant sector alone has taken a big hit. The National Restaurant Association of India reported that a quarter of restaurants across the country had shut down in 2021, leaving around 23 lakh people unemployed.

AdBanao is responding by “exploring new industries, user types, and regions”. “We have seen that when the market is getting impacted, a lot of businesses are doing more branding and promotions for their products or services. For this, they need some sort of medium that is economical and market-friendly,” underlines Katariya.

The annual subscription cost varies from Rs 2,500 to Rs 4,500. The first option allows 365 downloads, shares, and saves while the second option offers unlimited downloads. The library of content is arranged according to business or industry and a user gets daily ad design notifications, among other features.

“After downloading the app, a user needs to select a template from thousands of options, fill in details, choose colours and music, and make other changes. Everything can be done on the phone. There are tutorials on the app as well,” Firodia explains.

The product is “Made-in-India, for India”, the owners say, but AdBanao doesn’t want to limit itself only to the country.

The plan is to reach foreign users. In a subscription model, they say, numbers are the key. “We have some users in the APEC region. People are coming, exploring our product, leading to conversions. We are also creating content for them,” Katariya concludes.