Umang Bedi, a cofounder of VerSe Innovation, informed a media outlet that the company’s financials are accurate and fair, and the report is clean. Although Deloitte found that the company’s controls were inadequate, it has been established that these shortcomings do not affect the consolidated financial statements of the business.
VerSe Innovation, the parent company of DailyHunt and Josh, is situated in Bengaluru. In its audit report for the fiscal year that ended in March 2024 (FY24), Deloitte found flaws in its internal financial controls.
Numerous weaknesses in VerSe Innovation’s internal procedures, such as supplier selection, expense provision, revenue recognition, virtual asset handling, and IT systems control, were brought to light by the audit. It is noteworthy that the company’s operational revenue for FY24 decreased 8.8% from INR 1,046.8 Cr to INR 954.7 Cr.
During the same year, their net loss decreased by over 56% to INR 814.8 Cr from INR 1,878.4 Cr in FY23. Additionally, according to Bedi, the loss was cut in half in FY25. (FY25 assertions from Dailyhunt will be discussed later.)
What Deloitte’s Findings State?
Deloitte, VerSe Innovation’s auditor, claimed in its report that the business lacked adequate controls over vendor selection, purchase order approval, and payment processing. Deloitte claims that this may result in overpayments, incorrect payments, or even fraud.
For example, one vendor provided specific invoice numbers associated with INR 35 Cr when the auditor requested confirmation of all outstanding payments as of March 31, 2024. VerSe Innovation discovered, however, that it had never received the aforementioned bills when it examined its internal records. VerSe Innovation claims that the invoice numbers seemed to be from FY22 rather than the fiscal year that was being examined.
This was not an isolated problem. The company’s controls over the purchase, sale, and management of virtual assets were deemed inadequate by the auditor. This raised the possibility of asset theft or even revenue misreporting.
Notably, the business runs and maintains mobile platforms that allow users to engage with live streamers in real time and view live-streamed material from the streamers. Such content is sold under the category of virtual assets.
Additionally, the auditor stated that VerSe’s approach to documenting all costs before the end of the fiscal year was inadequate, potentially leading to inaccuracies in the costs that were reported.
VerSe Innovation’s controls for capturing advertising revenues were deemed ineffective by Deloitte. Some campaigns ran the danger of inaccurate revenue reporting because they were not adequately documented with client permissions.
Playing with the Rules
The auditor added that VerSe Innovation had trouble appropriately implementing revenue recognition rules under Indian accounting standards. It is because of the complexity of its company, which included serving as an aggregator across numerous partners, publishers, and ad platforms.
In addition to the news aggregator Dailyhunt and the short video platform, VerSe Innovation also runs Valueleaf, a digital marketing solutions company, and Magzter, a news subscription platform.
VerSe Innovation acknowledged the problems the auditor had found and stated that it was strengthening internal controls through IT access policies, process workshops, and new documentation frameworks.
We all know that our own physical and mental health is important, but did you realize your brand also has a lot of the same components? We’re not talking about just being Happiness or Successful – these values can quickly turn into something less than desirable if left unchecked.
“What kind?” people might ask; Well, there’s an easy way to find out! Symptoms include low productivity/performance at work (or home) and lacklustre relationships with others, both internally AND externally oriented towards one another.
So, it is essential that you diagnose your business and make sure that it doesn’t fall ill due to any unforeseen circumstances. Thus, you have to take care of your brand health.
What Is Brand Health?
Brand health is about how well your company performs overall. If the brand helps you achieve all of the goals that you have set for yourself, then it’s successful and a healthy one! Healthy brands are those that have a high brand score!
Why Is Brand Health Important?
Brand health is important because it can help your company achieve its goals. If the brand provides value and helps you reach all of these objectives, then that would make them successful! And as we know from the previous discussion about how healthy brands are those which have a high brand score – so this means having an effective marketing strategy will always lead towards optimum profitability for any business venture.
Benefits of knowing your brand health :
To determine what’s working for your branding strategy and what isn’t
Take an honest look at the performance of all elements that make up a cohesive whole.
Identify strengths and weaknesses – This will help you correct any problems before they get out of hand or worse yet, become irreparable!
Brand Health Metrics Every Company Should Keep a Track Of
Now that you know what is brand health and why it is important, here are a few brand health metrics that you need to take care of.
1. Brand Awareness
When it comes to marketing, brand awareness is a fundamental metric that should never be overlooked. Marketers can track their progress by conducting surveys or extrapolating engagement information from social media platforms.
The best way for them to get started on this journey toward growing their own value as an organization starts with assessing how easily recognizable they are within consumers’ mindsets and determining if there’s room left under those perceptions (or not).
Brand Awareness has been shown time after again as being one of the most important factors when deciding who will thrive in today’s marketplace so don’t leave yours behind!
2. Brand Consideration
Brand consideration is a great metric of brand health, as it measures how popular you are in comparison to generic or competing brands. You can get this information through surveys and by paying close attention to market share following branded campaigns–marketing that helps your company stand out from competitors!
3. Brand Association
This metric is a ranking of how closely your customer base associates you with certain brands. This mapping can help identify competitors and potential partnerships because it outlines who their “brand neighbours” are – meaning that this data could be used in targeting new customers or pairing up with existing ones for cross-marketing opportunities!
4. Customer Satisfaction
The customer satisfaction survey is a great way to measure how your customers feel about their experience with you. If they aren’t satisfied, then it’s likely that future purchases won’t be either and may speak negatively of the brand as well!
5. Brand Perception
Your brand perception is the first impression your customers have of you. It’s important because it helps them decide if they want to buy from your brand or not.
There are many ways for people in general communities that allow online surveys like Google Consumer Experience (GCE) which provides data on companies’ behaviours based on these opinions as well feedback collected via smartphone applications available at both iTunes store and Playstore corners respectively.
6. Brand Salience
When it comes to building a brand, you need the right tools for measuring your success. Brand salience helps determine if customers will remember and favourable opinion of what makes your brand different from others.
For example, A quick-service restaurant could ask people in their target audience which restaurants popped into mind when they thought “quick service.” If this was one that consistently came up on lists near or at the top (based on responses), then it is likely pleased with how well it’s doing thus far.
7. Brand Loyalty
Brands have always known that there is something special about loyalty. It’s the reason why many companies strive to maintain their customer base, and it can be assessed through methods like brand health surveys or repurchase data.
8. Brand Sentiment
With the help of sentiment analysis, marketers can identify how their campaign is shaping overall perceptions for a brand. This information could be tied to ROI as customers who like and trust your company are more likely than ever before in recent history (or perhaps any) to purchase from you regularly on an ongoing basis!
9. Net Promoter Score
When it comes to determining a customer’s likelihood of recommending your brand, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is often used. This metric helps you see whether or not they’re advocates for what yours has going on and how well-loved/known an organization might be in its niche market segmentation terms–whether people would tell others if these were available or good to use.
10. Brand Equity
Your brand equity is a measure of how much your company overall means to you, both socially and financially. By generating awareness for the things that matter most in life through promises delivered on time with great quality control over what speaks volumes about who we really want our audience to be – this will increase values which then leads us up towards having even higher metrics than before!
Branding is a strategic process that takes time and effort to develop. If you are looking for the benefits of branding without putting in all this hard work, metrics can help provide an estimate on how successful your strategy was by providing some basic information about its impacts such as traffic or revenue numbers.
It’s important not only to understand what these numbers mean but also to use them efficiently because if Brand Analytics doesn’t give us enough data then there may be other ways where brands aren’t maximizing value from their brand strategies. So, always take care of your brand metrics and keep monitoring them to make sure your brand is healthy and well-functioning.
FAQ
What are brand health metrics?
Brand health metrics are metrics that help you track the performance of your company.
What are examples of brand metrics?
Net Promoter Score, Purchase Intent, Unprompted Brand Recall, Prompted Brand Recall, Brand Uplift, and Share of Voice are some of the examples of brand metrics.
How do you measure brand metrics?
Website Traffic, Brand Awareness, Search volume, and Social Media Engagement are metrics you can track to measure brand metrics.
A brand audit is the most important way to analyze your business. The position of your brand in the market determines the profit you will make. A proper brand audit helps you in getting familiar with your audience.
It helps you in understanding those areas of your business where you need to improve. There are various tools by which you can conduct a brand audit. However, before moving on with the steps which can help you do your brand audit, let’s understand what it is.
Before making any significant changes in your business, you need to know about fitful changes. You need to have proper knowledge about why these changes are necessary. Proper knowledge of the right and wrong techniques and strategies along with reasons is really helpful. If you lack this knowledge, the changes you would make may do harm rather than doing good.
However, a brand audit allows you to have a detailed analysis of such information. A brand audit is an analytical study that helps you in understanding and determining your position in the consumer market. It is generally a study of your brand and its strengths and weaknesses. It is essential if you wish to grow your business.
What is brand audit?
When And Why Is A Brand Audit Important?
You may ponder regarding why and when is a brand audit necessary. Well, when you see that the success rate of your business is falling, you need to conduct a brand audit. Suppose, you notice that your campaigns are less successful or your sales are falling. In such signs of weakened business moves, you need to perform a brand audit.
During a brand audit, three main areas are looked upon. The first of them is internal branding, which refers to the values and motives of the company. The second is the external branding, which includes a logo and other display assets of the business. The third is the customer experience, which is the feedback of the customer.
How To Perform Brand Audit?
Most companies often hire brand agencies for conducting an audit of their brand details. However, you can even do it by yourself by following these steps:-
Construct your framework
Analyse your business
Review your business’s social media reach
Review your sales
Interact with your audience and customers
Know and analyze your competitor
Plan and monitor your steps
Let’s discuss these steps in detail so that you can have diverse knowledge about these steps.
Step 1. Construct your framework
This is the first step to a proper brand audit. With the help of mind mapping, you need to analyze the various factors that affect your business. You need to answer the following questions:
1. What’s the niche of your business?
2. Are your products related to your niche?
3. Why customers choose you?
4. Why should customers choose you further?
5. Is your performance better in comparison to your competitors?
The answers will help you have a rough idea about your business and its strengths.
Step 2. Analyse your business
Before thinking of making changes, you need to understand the current status of your business. You need to overlook topics such as:
When you have all these details about the present state of your business, you can move on to the third step.
Step 3. Review your business’s social media reach
Analyze the social media reach of your business
The pillars of a business include its website, social media platforms, logo, and others. Your website and social media platforms are the first impressions of your impression. Hence, they should be properly constructed. They should be easily navigable and understandable. Besides these, your content and logo should even be friendly towards your customers. You need to review the following topics:
1. Is your website friendly to the customer?
2. Does it have the option of language conversion?
3. How does it rank in search engines?
4. Does the logo justify your company’s actions?
5. Is the tone of your conversation friendly?
6. Are your click rates higher?
7. Do you have enough reach on social media?
8. Are your products being recommended by influencers?
9. What’s the reaction of your customers?
A proper analysis of your business pillars will help you understand your business better. It will even help you understand your engagement rate and the reason behind it. Hence, it’s mandatory.
Step 4. Review your sales
Reviewing sales is necessary because it helps you to understand why some people didn’t turn into customers. You need to check up the following questions:
1. If your sales have dropped, then why?
2. Is your pricing rate unaffordable?
3. Are your competitors having better prices?
4. Is your brand not fulfilling the promises?
On having the answers to these questions, you will have detailed information on the strengths and downfalls of your business. However, this information is from your point of view.
Step 5. Interact with your audience and customers
Take customers review
Until this step, you had the details of your weaknesses from your side. However, you also need to have the customer’s point of view. This is far more important because you eventually have to serve your customers. You need to interact with your audience and customers. This can be best done by surveys and polls. You can know the exact sentiments of your customers which you can use to improve your reach.
Step 6. Know and analyze your competitor
Once you know your business, you need to look at your competitors. You need to observe the strategies used by them. You need to do the following things:
Finally, you have reached the final step. You have gathered information about your business and brand. Now, you need to analyze this data while planning your next moves. You need to focus more on the moves of your competitors and plan accordingly.
After proper planning, you need to implement your ideas and plans. While implementing, you also need to check on the performance of your moves. Note down the changes you notice, and you are done with your brand audit.
Conclusion
People often hesitate to conduct a proper brand audit. This is because they are afraid to face the weaknesses of their own business. However, the sickness of your business can’t be solved if you don’t diagnose the issues.
Brand audit diagnoses the problems behind the staggering growth of your business. However, a brand audit isn’t an easy task. You need to be prepared for toiling hard to get the results. In addition to that, you even need to be honest with yourself and your business. Realize your flaws and work on them. It will pave the path to the success of your business.
FAQs
Why is brand audit important?
Brand audit helps a business to figure out its strengths and weaknesses. It helps in creating opportunities for improvement expand the business.
When should you do a brand audit?
Brand audit should be done whenever there are the changes in busines like:
Changes in Market
Changes in your product/service your business offer
