InMobi targets 2-bn user base

Independent global mobile advertising company InMobi is looking at increasing its user base by two to two-and-a-half fold within 12 to 24 months.

InMobi Co-founder and Head of Commerce Abhay Singhal told Deccan Herald that the company is looking for more disruption in the advertisement world with single-minded focus on users and adding more clients.

“Now we have reached one billion users which places us in the third position after Facebook and Google. Our target is to scale our user base to two billion and raise our client base from the current 6,000. We are least bothered about fundraising or going for IPO,” he said.

Founded in 2007 in India by Naveen Tewari and fellow IIT-ians Amit Gupta, Mohit Saxena, and Abhay Singhal, InMobi was originally a text message-based advertising company. After shifting its business to mobile advertisement in 2012, it gained exponential growth in India and globally, and attracted total funding of about $220 million. Beside Mumbai Angels, its investors include SoftBank Capital, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers, and Sherpalo Ventures. It also made three acquisitions — MMTG Labs, Appstores.com, and Overlay Media.

“Unlike other startups in India that are in the business of growing the business, we are profitable. So there is no pressure to raise money. We believe raising money is not good for any company because it will dilute everybody’s equity,” he said. But he said InMobi will go for raising money if there is any reason to grow the business.

‘Tough & unconventional’
On the company’s journey, he said InMobi made tough and unconventional choices and so it makes an interesting and unique company. “Our first decision was to begin our journey from India during a time when people had the belief that product companies can’t be formed here. Also, worldwide the US is considered the biggest ad market. InMobi went to the US in the end. As a startup, we thought we should establish our roots and compete with giants,” he said.

Singhal takes pride in the fact that those who left the company have founded 45 startups. “Our business is built on three fundamentals. How well do we know our users? How relevant and good are the ads we show? How many people can we show the ads?” he said.

Besides competition from the likes of Facebook, Google and other native advertisers, he said the company is looking at the changing needs of advertisement as it is going to be accessed not only from mobiles, but also from wearable devices and internet of things (IoT) devices.

On the revenue side, he declined to comment but said InMobi was valued between $2.5 billion and $3 billion as per a recent Wall Street Journal report.
DH News Service