Being a finance professional with a knack for advertising, Karan Bhardwaj early on realized the difference holograms could make on Indian advertising.
With the aim of introducing futuristic technology into the advertising market in the country, Bharadwaj started ExperientialEtc in 2017.
ExperientialEtc is an adtech agency that uses creative metaverse applications to create interactive campaigns for brands and products. But that is not how they began.
The company initially started with holograms in campaigns which people were not used to at the time. “We soon realized it is not the product but the content we create that is attracting the clients.” Bhardwaj, founder and CEO of the company told Entrackr.
The company then moved on to strengthening their design services and worked with content agencies. Eventually they started working with sensor-based activation, route shows, projection mapping etc. The core underlying asset of the company became innovation and technology.
The process begins when a brand approaches the company with a product or service in hand. This is when the ideation meetings commence in order to discuss the pitches and ideas. The company then chooses the innovative technology which is best suited for that particular product’s campaign and works with its team of engineers and designers to put out the final result.
It was in 2020 that the Mumbai-based company explored the AR Virtual Reality virtual spaces, Metaverse, and web 3.0 Creating apps. The company previously received 70% of its business through agencies that it now receives directly from the businesses.
The company uses SaaS based products along with AR, VR, robotics and AI to elevate the digital advertising of its client’s products.
The 5-year-old company has raised a total of $550k across two funding rounds. They raised $200k in its first funding round held in March 2022 and was backed by Startplanes and Snard Finance. The second round was held in October 2022 where it raised $350k and was backed by We Founder Circle and India Accelerators.
The company had a revenue of Rs 346 lakh last financial year.
With growing revenue trends for the last two years, ExperientialEtc is expecting to close its Series A in December 2022 and will focus on expanding to more locations and introducing various tech led services.
India’s advertising market was valued at Rs 667 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach Rs 1272 billion by 2027 which will be a growth rate of 11.3% between 2022 and 2027. Even with such a large market, the Ad Tech sector is not explored leaving ExperientialEtc with very few competitors that deal with the same kind of technology.Â
