Exclusive: IndiaMART’s Dinesh Agarwal invests in Zapr

VC Circle

Gurgaon-based tech startup Red Brick Lane Marketing Solutions Pvt Ltd, which runs Zapr, a mobile app that lets users earn reward points for watching TV commercials, has received an undisclosed amount of angel investment from Indiamart founder Dinesh Agarwal.

The company had received seed investment in 2013 from former Indiagames COO Samir Bangara and others. GSF Accelerator, a part of the Global Super Angel Forum, had shortlisted Red Brick Lane among five startups for its inaugural batch in 2012.

The Gurgaon-based startup allows viewers to get reward points for checking in the ads they are watching. Users need to tap the ‘ZAP’ button once the ad-break starts on TV and then sit back and let the phone listen to your TV and identify which ads are being watched (or at least switched on). Users get rewards with vouchers from e-com firms and multiplex chains. It claims to analyse data across 5000 cities and villages across the country, according to its website.

The company was founded in February 2012 by Deepak Baid, Sandipan Mondal and Sajo Mathews. Baid is an IIT Madras alumnus, and has earlier worked with Everest Group. Mondal has an engineering degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York, and was previously involved with Essex Lake Group. Mathews is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, and was with Feedback Ventures prior to founding the startup. All three founders are alumni of IIM-Ahmedabad as well.

Agarwal has earlier invested in medical app Curofy, crowdfunding platform Wishberry, marketing platform SilverPush, foodtech startup InnerChef, developer startup AppVirality and others. Agarwal founded Indiamart, a B2B platform for small and medium enterprises, in 1996. Recently, the company launched its e-commerce marketplace for business goods and supplies called Tolexo.

Currently, only BARC and TAM, which joined hands in August this year, measure TV viewing habits in India.