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Adways opens India office and acquires POKKT's reward-based platform Pocket Money

POKKT doubles down on gaming as Adways takes Pocket Money forward

Date Type Companies involved Size
June 28th, 2016 acquisition Adways
POKKT
Not disclosed
Adways opens India office and acquires POKKT's reward-based platform Pocket Money

Tokyo-based marketing outfit Adways has moved into the Indian market with the acquisition of reward-based ad platform Pocket Moneyfrom POKKT.

POKKT, a Mumbai-based mobile advertising firm, grew its Pocket Money app to become the leading rewards exchange platform in India, boasting over 6 million installed users in the country.

Something to build on

Sensing an opportunity, Adways has signed a business partnership wiith POKKT to take Pocket Money forward and established a brand new Indian office.

Pocket Money is today amongst the top 5 Apps in the category with huge traction. We have built Pocket Money as a successful and profitable business in less than 18 months," reflects Rohit Sharma, POKKT CEO.

"However, we want to focus on our core business “POKKT Video Ads”, which is the leading mobile video ad platform for games in India and SEA. Adways is a large Global performance Ad Company and the right partner to scale the Pocket Money Business significantly in India.”

Strength in numbers

Yu Ishida, Country Manager of the newly-formed Adways India, invokes a recent report from Counterpoint Research stating that India is now the second largest worldwide smartphone market, with 220 million unique active users:

“India is one of the largest smartphone using markets in the world. With more [...] smartphone owners, the advertising is also moving from passive attention seeking to engagement driven exercise," he says.

"Pocket Money is one of India’s leading incentivizing app. We are excited to enter the country with such a dynamic and young team as Pocket Money. Launching Adways India and acquiring Pocket Money is another step towards consolidating our foothold in the Asian market.”


Features Editor

Matt is really bad at playing games, but hopefully a little better at writing about them. He's Features Editor for PocketGamer.biz, and has also written for lesser publications such as IGN, VICE, and Paste Magazine.