Integrid Media inks street furniture deal with Fumes International

Integrid Media’s OOH division has entered the street furniture segment by inking a strategic alliance with the Delhi based Fumes International to expand its inventory in Delhi and Mumbai.

Integrid Media was founded in January 2007 and is involved in the media aggregation, representation and reselling business. It operates in four different verticals: TV and speciality ad sales, OOH, Internet and new media and activation solutions.

Fumes International, founded by Fuad Lokhandwala, builds and maintains public utilities under the government’s public-private partnership (PPP) scheme.

What is street furniture? Bus shelters, public utilities like toilet blocks, pedestrian bridges and public seating arrangements are all street furniture.

Mishra adds that OOH is an important vertical of Integrid Media and that it has been able to create substantial presence in a very short time in all OOH verticals such as billboards, transit and digital. With the alliance with Fumes, it has now forayed into the street furniture business as well, and this vertical will be an important part of the company’s offerings in the OOH space.

Mishra says, “Currently, the OOH environment is going through a lot of regulatory issues. Street furniture is part of the city development plans and as such offer not only convenience to the public, but are also aesthetically appealing and a compelling medium for advertisers.”

In the recent past, Integrid Media has made exclusive deals with three leading Mumbai based OOH media companies, Zenith Outdoors, Bombay Advertising Company and Icon Advertising, to expand its inventory in Mumbai and further strengthen its presence in the OOH space. As part of the same strategy, Integrid Media is also looking at acquiring small and medium sized agencies in the OOH space.

The company aims to be one of the large aggregators of OOH inventory across the main cities and Tier II cities in India. “We are currently present in seven cities and have been growing at 200 per cent quarter-on-quarter. We estimate OOH to be around 50 per cent of Integrid Media’s revenue during 2008-09 and 40 per cent of our overall revenue target for 2011-12,” says Mishra.

Street furniture currently contributes around 26 per cent of the overall revenue of the Indian out-of-home (OOH) industry. Street furniture is poised to be the fastest growing segment of the OOH space in the coming years, growing at more than 20 per cent for the next five years. It’s no wonder most OOH companies are eyeing this particular vertical.