Mobile advertising firm InMobi receives Rs 37 crore funding

Bengaluru based mobile ad network company InMobi, previously known as mKhoj, has raised Rs 37 crore (US$8 million) funding from venture capital (VC) firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB) and Sherpalo Ventures. This is the second time that these VC firms have invested money in the company. Since its inception, the mobile ad network has raised total funding of more than Rs 70 crore from KPCB, Sherpalo Ventures and Mumbai Angels.

For the uninitiated, InMobi serves ads, mostly on cost per click (CPC) basis, across more than 3,000 mobile sites and applications combined together globally.

"We will hire more people and invest in technology in the US market, where InMobi established its presence a few months ago. We look forward to starting operations in Northern Africa region as well and hiring more people in Japan."

There are no plans to use the raised fund to invest more money in India, Singhal clarifies. He adds, "We have already invested a fair amount of money in the Indian market and now, with 3G mobile telephony set to roll out in the near future, we expect good returns from India."

In an official communiqué, Naveen Tewari, chief executive officer and founder, InMobi, says, "Since our launch in 2007, we have focused on building global expertise in mobile ad serving technology with a highly scalable platform. After launching our operations in the US and Europe and further expansion in Asia and Africa, our global ad impressions have increased from 7.5 billion to 16.9 billion monthly in just six months."

Singhal reveals that out of 16.9 billion ad impressions served every month via the InMobi platform, about 10 billion ad impressions get served in the Asia Pacific region, which is represented by India and Indonesia (as its largest markets), along with various other smaller markets such as Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Philippines, Australia and New Zealand.

InMobi routes two billion ad impressions to mobile sites and applications in the US market, 2.3 billion impressions to Africa, 1.6 billion impressions to Europe and 0.5 billion to West Asia.

The company has presences across 108 countries and reaches to about 179 million mobile phone users. Interestingly, its geographical presence is restricted to six countries, including the US, the UK, Japan, South Africa, India and Singapore. In India, it works with companies such as Vodafone, Reebok, Nokia, Samsung, Airtel, Hungama Digital and ESPN.

"InMobi is a great example of the media transformation taking place due to mobile technology. We support their vision to provide high reach, transparent and performance based mobile advertising to all corners of the globe," says Ajit Nazre, partner, KPCB in an official statement.

Another prominent player in the mobile ad network space is AdMob, which was acquired by Google for US$750 million in 2009.