What is InMobi all about?
There used to be a traditional method of receiving feedback for your products, services or goods which were often not very accurate and also consumed a lot more time to receive feedback. To understand if a product is working or not in the market and to determine the customer experience in the market is a big hassle for any company. There is an agitation involved to track the costumers and it seems like a long process. But now with the advent of the internet it can be made simpler with the products and services like InMobi.
InMobi is a leading mobile marketing and advertising service provider that gives you real time analysis about your products and services with analytical feedback and growth rates from real behind the screen customers.
For the customers, it is a better option to be get featured advertisements based on their personal preferences and choices, a customised ad content that is suitable for the customer to choose from instead of a wide range on random advertisements that pop up for no reason or relevance with the consumers choice or preference.
How InMobi came into existence?
Four pioneer gentlemen, Mohit Saxena, Naveen Tewari, Abhay Singhal and Amit Gupta in the year 2007 to start InMobi but under the name mKhoj. It is based out of the IT hub Benguluru city. It started out as a way to make marketing easier for companies and cater to a targeted group of audience. So, it was first an SMS based marketing company but realise the demand in the online space it quickly moved to an Internet and mobile based marketing and advertising company.
About the founders and the co-founders:
Naveen Tewari was born and raised in the city of Kanpur, his father was a professor in the Indian Institute of Technology, in the same city. Naveen Tewari continued in the same college where his father was a professor to get a Bachelor in Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering. He happened to meet the future co-founders of the company over here. Coming to his professional experience he worked in McKinsey and Company and then had a small stint in Charles River Ventures. After which he went to the Harvard business school to pursue a Master’s degree in Business Administration where he won the accolade of Dean’s award for his unprecedented leadership skills. Which is evident because while he was still completing his master’s degree he set up a non-profit organisation at the HBS that would fund for Rural school development in India.
Mohit Saxena was bought up in the city of lucknow, he was determined to take up engineering when he grew up though he was not sure of the area of specialization that he would be taking. As he grew up he went on to take up Metallurgy and Material learning since the indemand branches were not available. With that he worked with Tata Steel, AT&T Pacbell and the Virgin Mobile where he got to learn a lot and its experience came in hame handy to the startup of InMobi.
Abhay Singhal has done his Bachelor’s in engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. After which he worked as a project manager in Andale, Before co-founding InMobi he co-founded anather compony called TeN where he worked for about 10 years before he co- founded InMobi where he now is the CEO of the company.
Amit Gupta has finished his Bachelor in Engineering in Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur as well in Mechanical branch followed by an executive program in Harvard Business school. Speaking of his work experience he worked as a software engineer on Aditi, followed by Citibank and then a manager in Andale. He was then the founder and board advisor for Analyticworks, then the Mobile Marketing association after which he Co-founded Inmobi and now is also the founder Yulu.
Valuation and Investment:
InMobi received its recent funding from Softbank which was a $320 million which led it to join the elite group of the Unicorn club by becoming values at $1 Billion. The other investors include Kliener Perkins Caufield and others.
Journey so far:
InMobi started off as Naveen was exploring business opportunities in India and saw the huge growth in the mobile industry which was multiplying rapidly but he saw that there was a lacuna in the content creation area of the mobile industry, so he started formulating ideas in the same are and came up with a vague advertising plan for the mobile Industry. He shared his idea with a few other people and everyone seemed to think that it was a good idea so he went on to discuss it with his friend Abhay in the Bar over a few drinks and realised that Abhay too had been fostering similar plans in his head and that is when they knew that their destiny was sealed to start the Business together. They quickly put up a business plan and made it ready for the display of the Investors. They convinced their friend Amit to join them so that they could have an experienced team with expertise from every area. And also convinced Mohit who was working with Virgin Mobile to come join them as the CTO. With his agreement and a team put together they had a solid base and they were given funding because of the solid framework of the idea which led to the advent of mKhoj which was later converted into Inmobi.
Obstacles faced and overcome
The company had not seen success for almost a decade and was facing the wrath of heat of the Investors. But despite all that still made it to the list of Unicorns and focused on better content delivery from the companies end.
It faced a lot of challenges with clients discontinuing from the services being provided by the InMobi application which shook a lot of people’s confidence in the company but InMobi
