InMobi Raises $200 Million

Bangalore based mobile ad network company inMobi has raised $200 million in funding from Japan’s Softbank which would come in two Tranches one of $100 millon in September 2011 and the other $100 million in April of 2012. Including this huge money, InMobi has raised $215 million till date.

InMobi was founded in India in 2007 where it become the dominate ad network across the Asia Pacific Region. The company launched in the U.S. and Europe in early 2010. InMobi helps advertisers and developers serve up mobile ads, a fast-growing industry that has been fueled by the rise of consumer cellphones and multimedia-rich smartphones like Apple’s iPhone, android’s phones.

Everyone is just talking about this huge funding (probably this is the largest venture funding of year-11) but there is no news about the valuation or the current revenue of InMobi. How InMobi raised such a large funding? On What basis they got it? There would be only 2 possibilities behind InMobi’s $200 million funding.

1. InMobi would have shown a valuation of at least $ 2 billion in front of investors. Mobile ad marketing is growing but still it is a small market. According to a eMarketer “Mobile advertising is still a fairly small market. The total spend for such advertising is projected to hit $1.1 billion in the U.S. this year. That spend will hit $2.5 billion in 2014, the researcher estimates.” We should note that InMobi has big competitors like Google and Apple and these 2 companies hold the control on majority of smart phones (Andriod phones and IPhone). Would not this $2 billion valuation fairly big figure for InMobi.
2. So the 2nd thing that would have possible is, InMobi must be generating at least $20 million revenue so it got funding of 10 times of it's current revenue. This can be possible, because InMobi has good market capture in Asia Pecific and they are growing rapidly in latin American and in European market.

It really doesn’t matter how they pitched inmobi’s future in front of investors or how much of revenue they are generating currently. The thing that does matter, this company is doing extremely very well, growing rapidly and giving a good competition to the players like Google, Apple in the field of Mobile Ad networks. This funding will definitely help InMobi in its expansion. It might possible that they make their head count double or tipple. This means, InMobi will be opening many jobs for we Indian.

Indian Startups are going through a golden time currently. They are doing extremely well (FilpKart, Myntra, YeBhi, RedBus, SnapDeal, inkfruit, HomeShop18, SMSGupShup, JustDial and many more) and giving a good fight to American’s giants. Flipkart, InMobi, Redbus, SMSGupshup and JustDial are already in the list of 20 Hot International Startups You Need To Watch by Business Insider.

GeekOnNet congrats InMobi for its funding.

Company: InMobi

Head Quarter : Bangalore, India

Founder and CEO : Naveen Tewari

Funding: $215 million

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