Softbank Pumps $200 Million Into Mobile Ad Network Company InMobi

Robin Wauters

Robin Wauters is the European Editor of tech blog The Next Web and lead editor of Virtualization.com. He was a senior staff writer at TechCrunch until his departure in February 2012. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in... → Learn More

Thursday, September 15th, 2011
inmobi

InMobi, which bills itself as the world’s largest independent mobile ad network, has raised a whopping $200 million in funding from Softbank. The investment will come in two tranches: half this month, the other half in April 2012.

Softbank joins existing backers Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures as investors in the company, which recently acquired HTML5 ad builder Sprout.

Naveen Tewari, founder and CEO of InMobi, commented:

“The size of the investment and quality of investor validate the enormous potential in mobile today and strengthen our role in helping the industry evolve. We have already established ourselves as a leader in mobile advertising on every continent. This is just the beginning.

With a global leader like Softbank behind us, we are now well positioned to fully capitalize on the opportunity before us through substantially increased product innovation, deeper market penetration, and acquisitions across the mobile ad value chain.”

InMobi says its mobile ad network currently reaches 340 million consumers, in over 165 countries, through more than 47 billion monthly mobile ad impressions.

The company has raised $15.6 million before closing the $200m investment round earlier this week.


Company: InMobi
Website: inmobi.com
Launch Date: 2007
Funding: $216M

InMobi is an innovative mobile technology company that enables the world’s leading brands, developers, and publishers to engage global consumers. InMobi builds mobile-first technology platforms that leverage advances in big-data, user behavior, and cloud-based architectures to simplify advertising. Agencies and advertisers leverage InMobi platforms to create HTML5 rich media ads and engage 578M consumers across 165 countries. Developers and premium publishers use InMobi platforms to acquire and monetize their mobile apps and their mobile websites across the globe. With...

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Company: SoftBank
Website: softbank.co.jp
Launch Date: September 3, 1981

SoftBank is a Japanese telecommunications and media corporation, headquartered in Tokyo and founded in 1981 by Masayoshi Son. With a market capitalization of around $20 billion, SoftBank is one of the biggest Internet-related companies in Asia. SoftBank operates in various fields such as broadband infrastructure, e-commerce, Internet services, fixed-line telecommunications, mobile phone and web business, financial services and many more. The company took over mobile phone operations from Vodafone Japan in 2006 and is currently No. 3 among the main...

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