SoftBank invests $60m in Malaysian digital marketing business
SoftBank and Axiata Group announced Tuesday an investment of $60 million by the Japanese company in ADA, a digital analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and marketing company in the Malaysian telecom’s conglomerate.
The investment is aimed at expanding and speeding ADA’s analytics, data and AI digital marketing business in Asia, Axiata and SoftBank said in a joint statement. ADA currently serves 1,300 customers in the region.
“Beyond Japan”
In addition, Daichi Nozaki, SoftBank Vice President and Head of the Enterprise Business Unit’s Global Business Division, will join the ADA board in mid-May 2021.
SoftBank Corp. Representative Director and Chairman Ken Miyauchi said the ADA investment enables his company to embark on its “Beyond Japan” business strategy.
“We will utilize ADA’s know-how in data and AI, and its support structures,” Miyauchi told a virtual news conference. “And by closely collaborating with ADA, I’m confident we can propose new digital marketing solutions to companies in Asia and help support their digital transformation.”
The investment is also in line with SoftBank’s growth strategy announced during its initial public offering in 2018, he said.
With the investment, SoftBank will hold a 23.07 percent stake in ADA, which has a valuation of 1.07 billion ringgit ($260 million). Axiata Digital Services remains ADA’s majority shareholder at 63.47 percent.
Japan’s Sumitomo owns a 13.46 percent stake.
Common ground
Also, Axiata Group President and CEO Izzaddin Idris said both Axiata and SoftBank discovered they have common ground, and that ADA could fit well with some of SoftBank’s existing businesses.
ADA aims for a $2 billion valuation in the next five years across Southeast Asia.
“We have no immediate plans to spin off ADA via a public listing,” Izzaddin said. “Listings are to raise capital, but ADA is already raising capital without listing,” he added.
ADA CEO Srinivas Gattamneni said the $60 million investment would be used to develop a big data platform and AI models focused on digital marketing and the automation of content creation for the advertising industry.
Miyauchi said SoftBank sees tremendous potential in digital marketing, digital communication, digital automation and security services — with digital marketing in Asia as a promising growth area.
The latest advertising statistics show that as of January 2021, there were 5.22 billion unique mobile phone users in the world, as DataReportal noted. This makes up 66.6 percent of the total global population.
It also marks a 1.8 percent year-over-year increase from January 2020. In this one year, the world gained 93 million more mobile phone users. If these digital marketing statistics continue to trend, we’ll be seeing even more mobile phone users over the coming years.