InMobi

InMobi is a mobile advertising and discovery platform backed by Soft Bank and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The company was founded in 2007 in India with 17 offices across the globe.[1] InMobi won a spot in MIT Technology Review’s 50 most disruptive companies of 2013.
History

InMobi, earlier known as mKhoj,[3] started as an SMS-based search platform with initial funding from Mumbai Angels. In 2007, the company switched to a more scalable business model: mobile advertising. After the business model change, mKhoj rebranded itself to InMobi[3] and received two rounds of funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures. After venturing into mobile advertisement, the company initially banked upon mobile web published to generate revenue through Mobile Value Added Services via Mobile Phone Networks billing.
Funding

InMobi had received $220.6 Million via Angel, Series A, Series B, and Series C funding. In September 2011, it received a $200 million funding from Softbank which would come in two Tranches – one of $100 million in September 2011 and the other $100 million in April 2012.[4] In 2014, it secured an additional $5 Mn in funding from its existing investor Softbank. Softbank has further committed additional $25 Mn in InMobi if new investors come on board.[5] In 2015, InMobi has now put a name to its culture, ‘YaWiO’ and given it a formal structure, which includes making it one of several festivals InMobi hosts every year. The first ‘YaWiO’ event – to which it invited three startups to engage with its workforce for two days – began in Bengaluru on Monday. InMobi will also open its offices for other startups to observe its culture, how it treats and works with employees, which it expects will benefit new businesses for whom personnel-management is often a struggle.

Naveen Tewari

Naveen Tewari is an Indian entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of InMobi, a global mobile advertising and technology platform. He is the Board member of Paytm.
Personal life

Tewari grew up in the family of IIT Professors at Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. His father Dr. Sachinand Tiwari was a Professor at Indian Institute of Technology, KanpurIndia and completed his Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT) in 2000. Here he met Amit Gupta and Abhay Singhal who would later go on to be co-founder of InMobi along with Mohit Saxena.

His professional journey began with McKinsey and Company as a business analyst from 2000 to 2003 followed by a stint in 2004, at Charles River Ventures as an Associate. In 2005, he studied at Harvard Business School (HBS) for Master’s degree in Business Administration, where he was awarded the Dean’s Award,[1] for exceptional leadership and contribution. While at HBS, he also founded and chairs a U.S. based nonprofit called India Schoolhouse Fund which funds and sets up schools in rural India.
InMobi

In 2007 when Tewari, started his entrepreneurial journey with Abhay Singhal, Amit Gupta and Mohit Saxena from the shared apartment in Mumbai, they were called the ‘boys with powerpoint’. They started their first business mKhoj, a SMS search engine which failed shortly. They pivoted their business to mobile advertising and technology platform – InMobi, and moved their base to Bangalore to be in the hub of talent and technology. SoftBank, KPCB and Sherpalo are their key investors.