Monk Media Network boosts offerings with new acquisition

The agency recently acquired SocialGIZ to add web development and AI capabilities to its

team.

Digital marketing agency Monk Media Network recently acquired SocialGIZ, a social media and website development agency. The agency has acquired the entire team of ten people at SocialGIZ taking its strength to 57 people.

Monk Media Network was founded in January 2016 by Ashish Patkar who has over a decade of experience of working with agencies like Rediffusion, Everest, JWT, Hakuhodo Percept and Jack in the Box. Monk Media offers services like panning across content creation, media strategy, analytics, social media video production. SocialGIZ was founded by Ameya Adhikari in 2015 as an agency that builds websites. The acquisition adds web development and AI capabilities to the Monk Media's team based in Mumbai.

"We were looking for a design-heavy outfit good in AI and coding. The good thing about SocioGIZ is that although they had small clients, they had put together a really good team of engineering talent good with AI and coding. We were looking at a few agencies working on AI but the mix of marketing and AI was hard to find. This adds to our offerings when we approach clients and ensures that we already have the talent in place before making promises," says Ashish Patkar, founder and CEO, Monk Media Network.

Much of the original Monk Media's creative team today comprises people who followed Patkar when he left Jack In The Box.

He claims that his agency takes up client responsibilities as a whole. "We don't take just social media accounts. Say, all communications from NBA India (National Basketball Association), one of our clients, is done by us. Content-social media-TV, we do all. We are primarily a content creation and distribution agency" adds Patkar. Monk Media also has Cleanipedia, HUL's online guide to stain removal and Pfizer as it's clients.

Instead of having departments withing the office, teams are divided according to clients. The NBA team has 20 people, 15 people on HUL's Cleanipedia, 10 for production and the rest of the team is reserved for Pfizer.

"The acquisition was done on two conditions. First, it was an acquihire and then an equity deal. A certain percentage of Monk Media's equity have been given to the SocialGIZ founder and another key person. It is a minority dilution and is capped at 10 per cent. The dilution will happen over three years," Patkar claims.

Ameya Adhikari will join Monk Media Network as a member of the board and hold the designation of vice president – Finance.