InMobi

Last updated

InMobi
FormerlymKhoj
Company type Private
Industry
Founded2007;18 years ago (2007) [1]
Founder
  • Naveen Tewari
  • Mohit Saxena
  • Amit Gupta
  • Abhay Singhal
[2]
Headquarters
Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
  • Piyush Shah (Co Founder of InMobi Group and President & COO, Glance) [3]
  • Marc Steifman (CFO)
Products
RevenueIncrease2.svg₹589 crore (US$68 million) (FY23) [4]
Increase2.svg₹113 crore (US$13 million) (FY23) [4]
Number of employees
2,500 [5]
Website inmobi.com

InMobi (formerly mKhoj) is an Indian multinational technology company, based in Bangalore. [6] [7] [8] Originally an SMS-based search engine, it now operates a mobile-first platform to enable contextual mobile advertising. [9]

Contents

The company was founded in 2007 under the name mKhoj by Naveen Tewari, Mohit Saxena, Amit Gupta and Abhay Singhal. [10] In 2008, it transitioned from being a SMS-based search engine to mobile advertising and rebranded as InMobi. In 2011, InMobi became the first Indian unicorn startup company. [11] It has 22 offices in 12 countries across 5 continents and employs around 2,500 people. [12] [13]

The company is backed by Soft Bank, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Ram Shriram's Sherpalo Ventures. [9] [14] It raised a total of US$215.6 million in three rounds of funding – US$0.5 million in 2007, US$7.1 million in Series A funding in 2008, US$8 million in Series B funding in 2010, US$200 million in Series C funding in 2011. [9]

History

InMobi started in 2007, when it was known as mKhoj (mobile khoj), providing SMS-based search engine services. [12] The launch followed its first round of funding of $500,000 USD was from Mumbai Angels in August 2006.[ citation needed ] It was started by the four founders out of a residential apartment in Bangalore. [15]

The founders later felt the need to rebrand to InMobi as the company shifted focus from mobile search to mobile advertising. "InMobi" was also thought to be easier to pronounce in English as compared to mKhoj – which is a derivative of the Hindi word for "search". [16] The company initially operated in emerging markets in Asia and Africa, before expanding to the US in 2009. [17] After rebranding the company from mKhoj to InMobi, they received Series A funding of $7.1 million USD from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2008, and Series B funding to the tune of $8 Million USD in 2010. [18]

In 2011, the start-up raised $200 million USD from Softbank Group. The investment was doled out in two tranches, US$100 million in 2011 and the rest in 2012. [19]

In August 2011, InMobi acquired US-based mobile advertising provider Sprout, which was backed by Polaris Partners. Sprout, which provided the platform for creating HTML5 rich media advertising, was renamed InMobi Studio in 2012. [20] [21] In July 2012, InMobi acquired MMTG Labs, a San Francisco-based start-up that operates Facebook apps marketplace Appbistro as well as white label app distribution platform AppGalleries. Per TechCrunch, the new platform AppGallery was the reason for InMobi acquisition of MMTG. [22] [23]

InMobi launched its native advertising platform in 2014. [24] [25] In 2015, InMobi launched a new remarketing and discovery platform called Miip. [26] [27]

In September 2015, InMobi entered a monetisation partnership with China-based APUS group, which allows users to customise their android screens. The partnership provides the company access to an estimated 500 million users in China as well as exclusive access to all APUS users in India. [28] [29]

According to sources, InMobi laid off approximately 10 per cent of its workforce in April 2016, due to the company reeling under losses of US$45.5 million in 2014-15 and US$40.91 million in 2015–16 in a bid to show profitability. [18] The company also saw major attrition in their senior management during this phase. [30] InMobi has refuted the claims, by stating that they added 184 full employees in 2016 and their voluntary attrition rates are lower than the industry average with 80% of the executive team at InMobi has an average tenure of more than four years. [31]

In Jan 2018, InMobi acquired Los Angeles based Aerserv for US$90 Million in cash and stock to create the world's largest programmatic video platform for mobile publishers; making it InMobi's fifth and largest acquisition till date. [32] [33] In November 2019, InMobi's Glance [34] (the mobile content platform and part of the InMobi Group) acquired short video content platform Roposo. [35]

Awards and recognition

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Tech in Asia - Connecting Asia's startup ecosystem". www.techinasia.com.
  2. ↑ "INMOBI TECHNOLOGY SERVICES PRIVATE LIMITED - Company, directors and contact details | Zauba Corp". www.zaubacorp.com.
  3. ↑ "Content, Creators and Commerce: How Glance Wants to Lead India's Next Big Online Opportunity".
  4. 1 2 "InMobi Mobile advertising Platform Sees Revenue Jump of 41% in FY23". Exchange4media. Retrieved 27 January 2024.
  5. ↑ "InMobi lays off 50-70 employees on performance metrics". 23 January 2023.
  6. ↑ "InMobi and Microsoft partner on cloud-based mobile enterprise marketing platform". VentureBeat. 26 June 2018. Retrieved 23 August 2018.
  7. ↑ www.ETtech.com (26 June 2018). "InMobi partners Microsoft to offer marketing solutions to enterprises - ETtech". The Economic Times. Archived from the original on 23 August 2018. Retrieved 23 August 2018.
  8. ↑ Chatterjee, Laharee. "Microsoft, InMobi collaborate to offer marketing capabilities to..." U.S. Retrieved 23 August 2018.
  9. 1 2 3 "Why did InMobi succeed? It did things differently to compete, explains CEO Naveen Tewari". Firstpost. 7 March 2016. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  10. ↑ "InMobi's Naveen Tewari on the benefits of having cofounders "who are different yet similar"". The Economic Times. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  11. ↑ Ramakrishnan, N. (18 March 2019). "InMobi: The journey of India's first unicorn". @businessline.
  12. 1 2 Pandya-Wagh, Kinjal (20 October 2015). "India's global ad giant taking on Google and Facebook". BBC News. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  13. ↑ "Is Google looking to buy Indian startup InMobi to improve its advertising platform?". Firstpost. 11 March 2015. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  14. ↑ Abrar, Peerzada. "InMobi to pay $950,000 for deceptively tracking consumers' locations". The Hindu. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  15. ↑ Madhok, Diksha. "These early offices of India's hottest startups show how far they have come". Quartz. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  16. ↑ Wauters, Robin (5 August 2009). "Mobile Ad Network m Khoj Rebrands As InMobi, Eyes Expansion In Europe". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  17. ↑ "InMobi's Naveen Tewari: Mobile Internet Will Be the Largest Medium Ever - Knowledge@Wharton". Knowledge@Wharton. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  18. 1 2 "InMobi's Trials and Tribulations- Business News". www.businesstoday.in. 13 August 2016. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  19. ↑ Wasserman, Todd (15 September 2011). "Mobile Ad Network InMobi Raises $200 Million". Mashable. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  20. ↑ "InMobi acquires Sprout". www.afaqs.com. 4 August 2011. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  21. ↑ "InMobi rebrands HTML5 ad platform Sprout to InMobi Studio". www.nextbigwhat.com. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  22. ↑ Taylor, Colleen (12 July 2012). "InMobi Acquires MMTG Labs, The Startup Behind AppBistro And AppGalleries". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  23. ↑ SN, Vikas (13 July 2012). "InMobi Acquires Appbistro & AppGalleries Owner MMTG Labs". MediaNama. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  24. ↑ Mishra, Pankaj (29 April 2014). "InMobi Launches Native Ad Platform To Woo Publishers Looking Beyond Facebook, Google". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  25. ↑ Mishra, Pankaj (10 February 2014). "InMobi Launches Interactive Video Ad Platform To Help Advertisers Boost Sales On Mobile". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  26. ↑ Reporter, B. S. (15 July 2015). "InMobi launches content discovery ad platform Miip". Business Standard India. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  27. ↑ "InMobi Launches Mobile-First In-App Remarketing Platform". www.mediapost.com. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  28. ↑ "InMobi raises $100M from Tennenbaum, others". www.vccircle.com. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  29. ↑ Behal, Ambika. "India's InMobi Is Giving Facebook And Google A Run For Their Money". Forbes. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  30. ↑ Chandran, Peerzada Abrar, Pradeesh. "Layoffs at iconic mobile ad start-up InMobi". The Hindu. Retrieved 2 February 2017.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  31. ↑ "Flashback 2016: InMobi grapples with top-level exits, losses". Techcircle.in - India startups, internet, mobile, e-commerce, software, online businesses, technology, venture capital, angel, seed .Not only that this Inmobi tracks or embedds cookies without customers knowledge. 30 December 2016. Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  32. ↑ Bhattacharya, Ananya. "An Indian unicorn is going global in search of technology and talent". Quartz. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
  33. ↑ "InMobi acquires US-based AerServ for $90 million - Times of India". The Times of India. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
  34. ↑ "InMobi wants to glue your attention to your lock screen". Forbesindia.com- forbes india business news, share market investment, India's richest people, startups. 17 April 2019.
  35. ↑ "India's 1st unicorn InMobi's Glance buys IITians' video app Roposo". Inshorts - Stay Informed. Retrieved 26 November 2019.
  36. ↑ NDTV (2 February 2016), We are in China, taking on the Chinese, says India's InMobi , retrieved 2 February 2017
  37. ↑ Mathur, Nandita (17 February 2016). "Top 50 innovative companies" . Retrieved 2 February 2017.
  38. ↑ Review, MIT Technology, "50 Disruptive Companies 2013 - MIT Technology Review", MIT Technology Review, archived from the original on 17 August 2021, retrieved 2 February 2017
  39. ↑ CNBC.com staff (22 May 2018). "Meet the 2018 CNBC Disruptor 50 companies". CNBC. Retrieved 23 August 2018.
  40. ↑ "InMobi: Most Innovative Company | Fast Company". Fast Company. Retrieved 23 August 2018.
  41. ↑ "Meet the 2019 CNBC Disruptor 50 companies".
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