InMobi Gets $8 Million From Kleiner Perkins And Sherpalo Ventures

InMobi, the largest mobile ad network that hasn’t been acquired, has raised another $8 million in funding. The round was led by existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures and brings their total raised capital to $15.6 million.

We’ve estimated that the company did around $35 million in revenue in 2009, and may hit $75 million for all of 2010.

We’ve covered this startup a lot recently. In particular they are are extremely well set up for explosive growth in the U.S., a new market for them. From a June post:

Today they are probably the second biggest mobile advertising network in the world, with nearly 17 billion monthly impressions combined on mobile apps and mobile websites. Google’s AdMob has 18 billion impressions/month).

Most of InMobi’s ad impressions are outside of the U.S. The bulk – 10 billion – are in Asia where the company first launched. 2 billion are in the U.S., where the company has had limited operations since January 2010. Africa takes 2.3 billion, Europe 1.6 billion and the Middle East .5 billion. A full U.S. launch took place last week, and a Japan launch is coming soon.

How well will InMobi do in the U.S.? They were bullish before the recent news about Apple taking steps to make it nearly impossible for non-independent advertising networks like AdMob to work on the the iPhone and iPad.

We recently interviewed InMobi CEO Naveen Tewari last week to talk about his business. The video is below:

InMobi serves advertising in 108 countries today, and reaches 179 million consumers. The company launched in 2007. The entire press release is below:

InMobi Raises $8 Million in Series B from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures to Fund Expansion and Mobile Customer Discovery Technology

SAN FRANCISCO AND LONDON: July 13, 2010: InMobi, the world’s largest independent mobile ad network, today announced that it has secured $8 million in its Series B round from its existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures. With this new round, InMobi will focus on its recent US expansion, launch in Japan and continue to grow existing operations in Europe, Asia Pacific, and Africa. The company will also double its engineering staff to further enhance its mobile advertising technology platform globally.

This new round brings the total funding to more than $15 million. With 16.9 billion impressions monthly reaching 179 million consumers in 108 countries, InMobi offers advertisers, developers, and publishers a dependable global mobile advertising alternative to Google and Apple. From the beginning, InMobi has invested in building a highly scalable, mobile customer discovery ad network leveraging its unique analytics engine AdROItTM to optimize ad serving in real time. The results provide unmatched performance to its current list of marquee partners including Reebok, Microsoft, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Quaker Oats, Yamaha, Barclays, and Yahoo.

“Since our launch in 2007, we have focused on building global expertise in mobile ad serving technology with a highly scalable platform. After market launches in the US and Europe and further expansion in Asia and Africa, our global ad impressions increased from 7.5 billion to 16.9 billion monthly in just six months – it is clear our strategy is working.” said Naveen Tewari, CEO and Founder of InMobi. “This additional funding will help us capitalize on our early success and enable us to aggressively compete in major advertising markets globally.”

At the core of InMobi’s innovation is its technology. Further product developments will redefine the way advertisers, publishers and developers reach consumers and measure performance including detailed analytics that inform the ad serving process in real-time, automatically enhance ROI, and help advertisers maintain a targeted buy at scale globally.

“InMobi is a great example of the media transformation taking place due to mobile technology. We support their vision to provide high reach, transparent, performance-based mobile advertising to all corners of the globe,” said Ajit Nazre, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

“InMobi has exceeded our expectations every quarter since the company’s inception,” said Sandeep Murthy of Sherpalo Ventures. “They’ve not only developed a truly disruptive and leading edge technology, but applied flawless execution to deliver a market changing ad network platform that will achieve new levels in the industry with this funding.”