Enabling The Digital Makeover
It was a practical problem — of retaining and engaging users in mobile apps — that led Raviteja Dodda, a software engineer and an entrepreneur, to launch MoEngage, along with Yashwanth Kumar, in 2014.
With MoEngage, a next-generation marketing cloud for the mobile-first world, companies can now orchestrate campaigns across channels like push, email, in-app messaging, web push and sms, with auto-optimisation towards higher conversions powered by machine learning.
MoEngage works with consumer businesses across the world including Fortune 500 brands like Samsung, Deutsche Telekom (T Mobile), Vodafone, Hearst and Prudential.
Explaining the work being done by MoEngage, Dodda says that since traditional marketing clouds are expensive to implement, hard to learn and rule-based, MoEngage is building an enterprise software that is easier to use, fully integrated and learning-based. The platform continuously analyses smartphone users and the information is used to send periodic customised notifications to get users to use particular apps, he informs.
“Our revenue has grown 3x over the last one year, and our business has transformed from a single product offering to a multi-product suite with 60 per cent of our revenues coming from international markets... I spend a good amount of time traveling to our focus markets, meeting our customers,” says Dodda, CEO, MoEngage in an email interaction with BW.
A serial entrepreneur, Ravi started his journey by successfully co-founding Delight Circle, an app for spotting best deals that helped e-commerce companies drive mobile conversions early on.
It was with Delight Circle and learnings from his experience of working with e-commerce companies that led Dodda to start MoEngage as an AI-powered, omnichannel user analytics and engagement platform that helps mobile-forward companies reduce churn and improve customer lifetime value.
The underlying objective was to help customers get the best out of marketing automation to achieve early growth.
Dodda is said to have built MoEngage from the ground up into a formidable company that is constantly innovating and bringing cutting-edge AI-backed capabilities into the hands of marketers. Be it tech and product, or sales/marketing and customer success, Dodda is deeply involved in all major aspects of the company’s progress, thanks to his ability to don various hats as the situation demands.
Backed by Alchemist Accelerator, Helion Venture Partners, Exfinity Ventures, MoEngage has raised $6 million till date. It has also entered and established itself in key international markets like Southeast Asia and Europe.
Says Dodda: “MoEngage is an enabler of digital transformation for traditional enterprises like Airtel, Aditya Birla Group, Times of India and Internet startups like OYO, Grofers, OnlineTyari, Lybrate alike. Access to services has been a difficulty for most of the Indians who don’t live in Tier-1 cities and Internet enables the same. We are helping more users in India come online and enable great experiences with brands across verticals like online banking, insurance, bill payments, news, education, healthcare and entertainment.”
According to him, MoEngage currently enables digital experiences for more than 200 million users in India every month. “Besides, the company has been helping build the careers of around 100 people and our ex-employees have started up building the careers for more people indirectly,” says Dodda while listing his company’s achievements so far.
An alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur with a degree in Computer Science, Dodda co-founded his first startup while still a student at his alma mater. He was a Google Summer of Code student for two years and contributed widely to the Open Source community. At the age of 19, he published a paper on cross-cloud management on Springer, a renowned international science and tech journal.
