With over 35% control over Pakistan’s $2 billion advertising industry, Z2C Limited is the largest MarTech-focused venture accelerator in the country.
It has a majority stake in Brainchild and Blitz, the most extensive media agency in Pakistan and the most significant sports marketing agency in Pakistan, respectively.
The former is known for its Publicis Groupe affiliations across Starcom, Mediavest, Spark, and Publicis Media. The latter is well known for launching the Pakistan Super League in 2015.
With over $25 million in seed funding across OTT app bAlive, the influencer ecosystem Walee, one-click checkout solution bSecure, digital content leaderboard analytics engine ViewLytics, broadcast media sentiment tracker Lytics, and Meta reseller Dial Zero, the company is a formidable force in the advertising space.
Investment decisions of late reflect an interest in vertically integrated data to usher in media transparency and deliver more profound effectiveness in media investments. Chief strategy officer Fatima Hyder is a critical decision maker in which MarTech start-ups invest.
Based on the existing portfolio of investments, we can see what Z2C is looking to capture. Across product, price, placement, and promotion within the four P’s of marketing, Z2C has dominated promotion. It now needs tools that provide new forms of interaction among consumers and firms, new types of data that enable new analytic methods, and new strategic marketing frameworks.
This should cover the remaining three P’s of product, price, and placement.
The creator economy ecosystem of Walee provides Z2C with new forms of consumer-to-consumer, consumer-to-firm, firm-to-consumer, and firm-to-firm interactions. In time, Z2C may use bAlive to shift creators on to it’s own app to be part of a multichannel network and partake in representation deals through a PMP of creators. If your start-up owns creator relationships, is an MCN, and generates revenue for up & coming creators – it may be time to join Z2C. Linkstar comes to mind.
The rise of live stream selling will usher in data on how effective a creator is with the format. This may require machine vision to analyze facial expressions, tone of voice, and attire to find the best fit to drive a sale. This is partially being done for Z2C via its Mirrorr acquisition via Walee. A good investment fit for Z2C should be Bazaarghar, which recently launched a literacy-agnostic live selling solution within its eCommerce app with 100k downloads. Creators can live stream within the app and sell products from within the marketplace with which they have affiliate deals. Video and audio-first commerce is not dependent on literacy, giving Bazaarghar an edge over Daraz and Telemart.
Start-ups with machine vision technology can reconfigure their engines to analyze the effectiveness of salespeople’s facial expressions in livestream selling. Z2C has yet to invest in a MarTech that helps businesses make informed product launch and retirement decisions. The sentiment and trend tracking can be done with Social Champ.
New technology may enhance the market’s richness, quality, volume, and consumer data.
Some data that may have previously been out of reach for many firms, such as eye movement, speech, facial recognition, and genetic data, may become ubiquitous as the cost to collect and analyze them rapidly decreases. Deployed across Khaadi and Gul Ahmed retail stores, the best solution for this is SenseR from Integration Xperts.
The explosive growth of digital devices and software applications has created data streams that capture how consumers think, feel, behave, and interact with other consumers and firms at various points along the customer journey. This is covered in the fresh graduate to young married couple customer journey covered by MyGhar, which can invest in ML to figure out the psychographics and predictors around its closed applicants.
Large-scale field experiments and A/B tests allow companies to assess the causal effects of their marketing actions. Digital data-capture technology produces data on consumer–firm interactions via images, video, speech, and text.
With a vertically integrated MarTech stack across the four Ps and then the entire buyer funnel, CMOs can optimize website designs, effectively retarget advertising, evaluate the effects of new marketing tools, and attribute effects to marketing actions throughout the customer journey.
