SlideApp, which rewards users for reading the content displayed, has raised $3.6 million in its Series A round of funding, led by Songhyun Investment, a South Korea based venture capital firm.
With the new cash infusion, the company is now looking forward to increase its user base and to further increase the speed of product development. It will also spend money on marketing and advertising.
The app was launched in the year 2015 by Amrita Gujral and Nakul Sethi. Earlier, the company had raised $1.2 million in its seed funding round.
SlideApp is an Android application that rewards users for the content he or she reads. The user can choose the subject of content based on interests published by various advertisers or from bloggers.
In a statement, the company said:
SlideApp incentives its mobile users by awarding credit points every time they read content customized to their preference. The reward points accumulated can then be further utilized for mobile recharges.
The function of the SlideApp takes place when a user tries to unlock the phone. The user can swipe right on the phone screen to unlock the phone and swipe left to read up content on the screen.
The company believes that SlideApp works as a low cost marketing solution for many businesses. It further claims to have more than a million users for its application.
Nakul Sethi, co-founder of the company, said:
We focus on providing quality content to our users as well as detailed and relevant analytics to our B2B (business-to-business) customer base (that is, advertisers). The fresh round of investment will be used to enhance our targeting capabilities and unique advertising promotions.
In this space, the company will be competing against the likes of Paytunes. It allows users to listen advertisement jingles instead of ringtone and rewards for the same. It has already raised $500K in seed funding round.
As per the recent e-Marketer report, digital advertising spend in India is $1 billion, out of which mobile advertising is $0.18 billion. By 2019, the digital ad spend is expected to grow to $2.17 billion and mobile advertising to $1.23 billion.
