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Ideacts Innovations launches Clink; raises $5 million from Sequoia Capital

Indiantelevision.com Team

(2 July 2008 5:30 pm)

MUMBAI: With an aim to tap the white labeled cyber café space, Ideacts Innovations has launched Clinck, an internet media platform that seeks to provide advertisers the room to display their ads in an interactive format.

The internet media venture has received its first round of funding of $5 million from Sequoia Capital. It will use this amount for technology development and retail operations. Also, it has Sequoia Capital senior advisor R Ramaraj and Sequoia Capital operating partner Mohit Bhatnagar on its board of directors.

“The online internet space is currently witnessing a growth of over 50 per cent and along with it the online ad generating revenue opportunities is also growing day by day. With Clink, Ideacts has stepped into the consumer internet space and by specifically targeting the white labeled cyber cafés, Clink is actually aiming the 20 million internet users who access from these cafes. Thus, by providing this new media platform, advertisers can tap the youth onto the net through cafes directly,” said Ramaraj.

Clinck is an active desktop application that provides entertainment, information, and utility for the user. It features system shortcuts for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Web Search, Yahoo Messenger, GTalk, Windows Live Messenger Shortcut and interactive advertisements.

"We have already established an advertising alliance with MSN and will be providing the application software free of cost to the cyber cafes. We will pay them a fixed amount every month for using Clink,” said ideacts innovations co-founder and CEO Rudrajeet Desai.

Adding further Desai said, “At present, we have tied up with approximately 45 advertisers and are working with 625 cyber cafes. Also, we are targeting around 3,000 cyber cafes and 200 advertisers by December-end.”

Ideacts Innovations is currently operational in eight cities namely Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahemdabad, Chandigarh, Pune and Bangalore, and aims to target B and C tier cities by 2009.

“It has been our vision to make the internet experience better with new software technologies which are more effective and useful for our end users. Clink will enable us to offer to a broader set of advertisers an innovative platform to reach the hitherto, highly fragmented internet café space,” Desai said.

Clink is present at 5000 terminals and has a user base of around 1.2 million per month.