• Young Turks

Harvard graduate and former McKinsey man Naveen Tewari claims to have created the world’s second-largest mobile ad network in just four years. What started as an SMS search network, Mkhoj, in 2007 is now InMobi and this David certainly seems to be giving Goliath Google something to think about. InMobi delivers over 31 billion advertisements to 212 million mobile users in 145 countries every month. There are 2,000 advertisers and 8,000 publishers currently on the InMobi platform.

But what made Tewari change his business model? “As we entered the SMS search space, we realized that we couldn’t make it big in that specific space, so we moved out,” he says. His InMobi platform is very simple and uncomplicated. “There are many consumers in the world who browse the Internet on their mobiles either through browsers or applications. Now, you must have noticed the ads that appear next to those browsers or in those applications. Those ads are served by us and that’s our business model,” explains Tewari.

But, does he feel ads on mobile are intrusive? “User experience is of paramount importance to us, so we make sure that the ads are non-intrusive, something that the user chooses to engage with and is not forced to deal with,” explains the entrepreneur.

His company is second only to Google in the mobile ad network, but how wide is the gap between the two? “It’s very hard to know how far we are from Google because the numbers are all over the place. But we know that we are seeing quick growth and are very excited about that,” says Tewari.

Though mobile ad is a fairly new segment in the advertising space, Tewari feels that in the next 3-4 years, around 4-5 billion users across the world will be using mobile internet to access information and content. Betting big on the over Rs.90,000 crore mobile advertising market, Tewari and his team of 250 are now looking at entering the mobile commerce space. After building a strong presence in Asia and Africa, InMobi is gunning for the developed markets to get a larger share of the revenue pie but he will have to take on the big boys to make an impression.

And what is his monetization strategy with advertisers and publishers? “We have two sides to our customer profile. On one hand we have the publishers, who are the owners of content; on the other side we have the advertiser. So, we basically sit at the center and connect the two of them,” explains Tewari. He adds that it is a 60:40 split on the revenue share.

Helping advertisers target their ads to the right users, InMobi offers real time reporting on the performance of ad campaigns and even allows advertisers to make changes to give them the best return on their investments. Backed by venture capital firms like Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures, Tewari has already received funding of Rs.67.5 crore and is now betting big on the 3G opportunity.

Tewari’s future plans with his venture include looking to enter newer markets like China and Korea very soon. He also plans to do more product development and acquisitions in order to basically expand across the entire value chain and provide more and more value to his customers.

©Entrepreneur May 2011

Tags:
Caufield & buyers and sherpalo ventures, Goliath Google, InMobi, kleiner Perkins, Mkhoj, Naveen Tewari