Big Idea

Jingle jukebox

PayTunes is every advertiser’s dream come true

Have you been humming some advertisement jingle all day for no specific reason? If yes, don’t worry! It happens all the time. We all connect with jingles in one way or the other. Understanding this revenue potential, co-founders Divya Pratap Singh, Rakesh Sehgal and Gaurav Tiwari have come up with a mobile application, PayTunes, which changes your mobile ringtone to play the latest jingle of various advertisers that have signed up with the start-up. For every incoming call received, users get reward points with which they can pay bills or get a recharge.

PayTunes' selling proposition is targeted advertising. “The problem with advertisements on television is that there’s no guarantee of it reaching the target audience. We wanted to develop a medium where an advertisement reaches the exact audience as desired by the advertiser,” says Sehgal. While the application builds a detailed profile, the user always has the freedom to switch a ringtone or turn off the application. "Our target segment is largely the youth but we see ourselves reaching all user-segments,” adds Sehgal.

According to the start-up, of its 40,000 downloads, about 25,000 are active users. Though the company is using sample ringtones for now, with advertisers on board, the advertiser will decide the duration of every campaign. “We are in talks with ICICI, Pfizer, EasyCabs for B2C advertising and with Pepsi and Pidilite for B2B,” says Sehgal. The start-up has recently received funding from CIO Angel Network and its business model is based on charging per delivered advertisement. “About 75% of the amount is passed on to users in form of reward points while we charge about 25% as our convenience fee. Approximately 25 to 30 paise is charged on every delivered advertisement,” says Sehgal.  

Recalling the challenges the co-founders had to go through, Sehgal says that unlike other platforms, they did not have proof of execution. “Initially, we had no content. Only advertisement and pure cash was the content. After investors expressed interest, we were able to launch,” he says. With future plans of coming up with audio-visual advertisements, Sehgal says their primary goal is to establish themselves in mobile advertising. “Television, print and radio are the dominant vehicles for advertising. We want our ringtone-based advertisement platform to become a prominent player,” concludes Sehgal.