February 29, 2012 – Most online publishers use Captcha as a security tool. Google estimates say that over 200 million Captchas are filled every day. India has 100 million internet users in India which is projected to reach 336 million by 2016 according to report published by Edelweiss Securities Ltd. So, more than 5% of global internet users will be Indians.
Noida based startup, Simpli5d Technologies understands the potential these numbers present and introduced a novel take on Captchas. They launched NLPCaptcha, which is a Captcha based advertising platform. The NLPCaptcha technology is patent pending with the Government of India.
This is a win-win offering for both online publishers and advertisers. As a publisher, it not only provides better security to your website but also helps you monetize it. It converts your dead space reserved for security into the most premium inventory which the advertisers will love to buy and that too at zero upfront cost. The entire revenues add directly to the bottom line.
As an advertiser, it solves a fundamental problem – how to get 100% focused attention of the user and a high recall for the brand message. NLPCaptcha ensures that the user does not only see your ad but also engages with it. The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania recently did a research on Captcha advertisement and found that on an average Captcha advertisements increased brand recall by 111% and message recall by a factor of 12x compared with the exact same creative displayed as traditional static advertisements.
NLPCaptcha was started by Sidharth Oswal, Amit Mittal and Sahil Gupta. Amit is a computer engineer and has worked at TCS. Later he did his MBA from IIM Lucknow. He was the marketing head at Dainik Bhaskar Group before he started working on NLP Captcha.
Sidharth is also a computer engineer and holds a MBA degree in Finance and Marketing from Fore School of Management. He is a seasoned banker and has over 5 years of experience in sales. The third founder, Sahil Gupta, graduated in computer engineering from Kurukshetra University and has over 10 years of experience in development and management of web/mobile based products.
Unlike a regular Captcha, where the user just fills in a particular word or phrase, NLPCaptcha asks them to fill either the brand’s tagline or anything else connected to the brand being advertised.
The advertiser gets complete attention of the customer and brand recall is also high. Speaking about the advantages that NLPCaptcha presents an advertiser, Amit Mittal, co-founder, said, “The click through rate is a high 50%. By a 50% click through rate, I mean, out of every 100 people who fill a captcha 50 click on the advertisement.” “We only charge for the cost per recall,” added Amit.
NLPCaptcha is a bootstrapped startup and their current focus is on exploring new verticals and using Captcha to create new services. Initially, their focus was on building a competent tech team. “We were lucky in terms of the core team as all of us have a strong background in tech and media/advertising,” informed Amit.
Speaking about the early challenges NLPCaptcha faced, Amit said, “NLPCaptcha on the face of it looks very simple but I am sure you would understand that a significant effort goes into making the product look so simple. The growth in our case is highly inorganic and we could not enter the market with a beta version as the publishers you tie-up with, will have a dependency on NLPCaptcha.” Amit also added that they could not afford a single minute of downtime and their efforts paid off as the product is highly stable, scalable and secure.
The Edelweiss report also mentions that the online advertising space will experience more than 25% CAGR through 2016. This surely is music to NLPCaptcha’s ears.
NLPCaptcha has already got great traction. They are working with an impressive list of publishers, including Dainik Jagran group sites, Sify.com, Deccan Chronicle Group, Indian Express group sites and India Today group sites. They have also done ad campaigns for Lenskart.com, Zovi, etc. “We are also evaluating campaigns with Aircel, Lufthansa and other players,” informed Sidharth.
Finally, Amit summed it up when he said, “Last comes the basic chicken and egg situation – Publishers want advertisers and advertisers want good publishers/ reach. This is one of the most testing phases and luckily we have crossed that stage now but still a lot more to do.”