A Malaysia based media conglomerate Astro Group has acquired a 50% stake in little known Indian online firm Mogae Digital for $5 million. That puts the valuation of Morgae digital at 10 million and I have never ever heard of the agency yet.
Though the founders behind the agency are well known entrepreneurs from the advertising space. Mogae Digital is promoted by Sandeep Goyal and Tanya Goyal, who are the Indian Joint Venture partners Dentsu Media the Japanese Media company. So that kind of explains why the 10 million valuation given the fact that morgae digital which is suppose to be a digital agency has still no presence on the web.
The word is doing the rounds that Morgae would be launching a couple of properties one in the mobile social networking space and another in local search engine space this year.
The Astro Group is the one of the largest integrated media conglomerate in Malaysia which operates a pay TV channel on the DTH Platform and 12 Radio stations. This investment follows the trend of International media and advertising firms investing in India’s Digital growth. Agencies like Publicis, WPP, Aegis media and others have acquired or invested in creating digital arms. There have also been Media companies like MIH/Naspers that have invested heavily in the Indian online space via their portal ibibo.com.
Our take is that agencies/media co’s having access to advertisers will do well in the long run whether or not they are able to create great products. This is because advertiser access and conversion and Ad dollar flow into digital media is critical for the growth and agencies are best positioned to make this happen.
