The twinkle in his eyes and the pace of his words tell you that Anuj Khanna Sohum thinks faster than he can talk. He appears a powerhouse of ideas with a brain that never tires.

Having earned the tag of a serial innovator at a young age, Anuj Sohum has his life planned like a neatly plotted bar graph. A mere indication of the word innovation has him talking breathlessly about his new ventures.

After gaining experience from his first few entrepreneurial ventures, Anuj Sohum has “hit the ground running” with his latest project. He started Ad2c to contribute to the mobile advertising space. The company Ad2c is a joint venture between Affle and d2 communications of Japan, which is the largest mobile advertising network in the world. “Mobile advertising makes up less than one per cent of the total ad spends. This is unacceptable. Ad2c has been created to service the brands and traditional agency partners,” he says. “The mobile advertising industry is about Rs 150 crore and we hope to see it grow 10 times in the next 2-3 years.”

“The existing brands don't have the competence in mobile. We will be able to give them confidence to invest larger amounts in mobile. The budget for mobile advertising will grow because there is good return on investment,” says Anuj Sohum.

Ad2c's clients list includes Samsung, NDTV, adidas, Reebok and Coke.

The Beginning

A computer engineering graduate and an entrepreneur at heart, Anuj Sohum started his first company when he was 19, and in Singapore. “In the second year of my computer engineering course, I started my first company. The company still exists and has been acquired for several years now. It got acquired before I graduated and it was on campus for recruitment for my own graduating batch,” he says. His first company was acquired by the publicly-listed Malaysian conglomerate MCSB and rechristened myMCSB.

After having sold his first company, Anuj Sohum worked with it for a few years to help transform it. Then, he started his second company, an information security company SecLore, in 2003. “Although it got acquired by Herald Logic in 2007, it is still running,” he says. “My first company is over a decade old and is still doing the same business. This is the same in the case of my second company also. The companies and concepts started by me are sustaining, post a decade,” a proud Anuj Sohum adds.

It was at this time that he realised the need to create a company that was more consumer oriented. The first two were mainly enterprise driven. However, Anuj Sohum has always stuck to his philosophy of never “selling the software.” Thus, he created his third company, Affle which focussed on ‘making media mobile.' “The essence behind starting these companies was always that I would see a problem that needs to be addressed and have a ready solution. There was no apprehension of finance or no artificial constraints in mind. I would just jump in and start the company,” says Anuj Sohum.

In each of these companies, Sohum worked to bring them to a stage where it was time to graduate the company. It was a stage where the entrepreneur can still be the owner of the company but not the CEO.

“Many entrepreneurs have that problem in letting go of their company. I did not have that problem. I never plan to sell my company. It's more of a genuine long-term association in greater interest of the original vision. I try to be dispassionately passionate,” says he.

On probing him about his next venture, Anuj Sohum says: “I would like to do something around the video space. I would like to create next-gen video experiences. Let's see… I haven't planned anything but this is something on my mind.”

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