• ADA receives USD 60 million investment from SoftBank Corp.
• SoftBank Corp. as a strategic investor will form business alliance to make ADA the core of its digital and data marketing arm in Southeast Asia
• New investment will be used to enhance ADA’s data and AI offering, and marketing solutions to brands and enterprises

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, May 11, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — ADA, the largest independent analytics, data, and AI digital marketing business in the region across 9 markets in South and Southeast Asia announces USD 60 million investment from SoftBank Corp. (SoftBank), a Fortune 500 telecommunications company with a strong investment portfolio headquartered in Japan.

Established in 2018, ADA has seen tremendous growth in its services in designing and executing integrated analytics, data, and AI digital marketing solutions, serving over 1,300 clients in the region. ADA’s differentiating factor lies in its proprietary technology IP in data processing, data ingestion, and consumer AI models; gleaned from 375 million consumer profiles on monthly basis. Supporting this is ADA’s diverse talent pool of over 600 data scientists, digital media gurus, industry experts, and management consultants.

SoftBank will make ADA a core to its digital and data marketing arm, and leverage their network of portfolio companies, creating huge synergy globally. This alliance allows SoftBank to expand their footprint in the region by bringing its customer data platform (CDP), “Treasure Data“, and the consumer base of its communication app, ‘LINE’ for the benefit of brands and marketers.

With this funding, ADA will continue its development of AI models, with primary focus on precision targeting for the marketing industry; invest in content analytics and automation of content creation; and also create data platforms to deliver consumer insights, predict consumer mindset, and help business decisioning.

Srinivas Gattamneni, Chief Executive Officer of ADA, said, “The post-COVID-19 norm is a ‘digital-first’ economy, which ADA has been successfully building towards. We are very excited to welcome SoftBank Corp. as a valuable partner in our next phase of growth. The capital and business alliance with SoftBank Corp. will further propel ADA’s analytics, data, and AI digital marketing solutions for the benefit of our customers across the region.”

Daichi Nozaki, Vice President and Head of the Enterprise Business Unit’s Global Business Division, SoftBank Corp., said: “We believe this alliance between SoftBank and ADA will reshape the digital marketing and data landscape in the Asia-Pacific region. This move is part of our Beyond Carrier growth strategy as we seek to expand beyond the traditional telecommunications business; and by combining our diversified solutions and technologies with ADA’s expertise in the areas of analytics, data, and AI digital marketing, we expect we can both generate significant synergies.”

Mohd Khairil Abdullah, Chairman of ADA, said: “We welcome the investment by SoftBank Corp., which brings tremendous growth opportunities to ADA. It also marks a significant milestone, especially with Southeast Asia’s digital market poised to potentially become one of the world’s top five digital economies^[1]. The investment from SoftBank Corp. is recognition of ADA as the vehicle to capture the ensuing growth.”

After the investment, SoftBank will own a 23.07% shareholding in ADA, establishing ADA’s valuation at USD 260 million.

About ADA

ADA is a data and artificial intelligence company that designs and executes integrated digital, analytics, and marketing solutions.

Operating across nine markets in South and Southeast Asia, ADA partners with leading brands to drive their digital and data maturity, and achieve their business goals. We are anchored on the following main services:

• Providing business insights, data enrichment, and advanced analytics
• Understanding the consumer mindset and designing data-driven creative marketing strategies
• Executing end-to-end digital marketing solutions for growth hacking, funnel optimisation, and goal optimisation

ADA complements its unique digital expertise with deep proprietary data of 375 Million consumers.

About SoftBank Corp.

Guided by the SoftBank Group’s corporate philosophy, “Information Revolution – Happiness for everyone,” SoftBank Corp. (TOKYO: 9434) combines telecommunications services with cutting-edge technologies to create and operate new businesses. SoftBank Corp. serves more than 45 million mobile consumer and enterprise subscribers in Japan, and as part of its “Beyond Carrier” strategy, is redefining industries by leveraging its unique strengths as a network operator to fully harness the power of 5G, big data, AI, IoT, robotics and other key technologies. To learn more, please visit www.softbank.jp/en