Introducing the new InMobi Product Team – Consumers!

We spend so much time in the mobile industry talking technology and data. Think about how many mobile advertising conversations you have and how often words like click rate, CPC, eCPM, optimization, ad serving, call to action, and targeting are used? Frankly, it’s hard to imagine one of these words does not come up in every conversation! Now think about how often you hear the word consumer or customer? If we don’t talk about consumers, we’re not thinking about consumers. We can tell ourselves anything we want, but the reality is that behind the numbers and tech speak are actual people and they are too often left outside the conversation.

Let’s change that. Let’s invite them in. Why not? These are the people whose actions define what we build technically and what the numbers look like every day. Sure, we know that people in France are different than those in Indonesia, but what about the difference between Cote D’Azur and Paris? London and Birmingham? Mumbai and Bangalore? What about the businessman in Paris on the Blackberry versus the young woman in Bourgogne on the iPhone? When we talk about targeting, we are talking about a person and it’s the concept that drives a key InMobi focus for 2010. Consumers. People. Who are they. What interests them.

With this in mind, we launched our recent features for advertisers. I won’t bore you with details in this blog (you can explore them at http://inmobi.com/advertiser), but I will tell you that change is coming from InMobi. More focus on the consumer. More research on the consumer. Building products to serve the consumer.

Check back here and join the conversation. This blog and our recent product release are the beginning of an amazing 2010 that starts with (you guessed it) the consumer.

Cordially,
James Lamberti
VP Global Marketing, InMobi

Haiti Still Needs Our Help! Text “Haiti” to 90999 to Donate $10

The InMobi community joined dozens of mobile industry companies across the world helping provide relief to the Haitian people.  We launched a US campaign yesterday with a click to text call to action campaign running through our mobile ad network.  Consumers will be encouraged to simply text the word HAITI to 90999 to give $10.  When prompted, they reply with YES to confirm a one-time gift. The $10 donation will appear on their next mobile bill and 100% of the donation will go to Red Cross to help those hit by this natural disaster.  The campaign was set up by mGive which you can read about at
http://blog.mgive.com.  We will be sure to share results of the campaign with you in a follow-up post.

Please spread the word and if you have the means, text “Haiti” to 90999 to donate your $10.

Thanks,
The InMobi Team

New Publisher User Interface – Driven by the customer

We launched the new user interface for publishers last week and the response has been excellent. This has been one of the releases which involved a high level of customer touch point. Before we commenced the project, we spoke to several publishers to understand how we could improve the quality of their experience with InMobi. When we then analyzed the inputs, 3 things emerged as areas that needed to be addressed.

1. Need for more data about their engagement.

2. Need for better control on their engagement.

3. Better ease of use of the application.

One area that was not explicitly mentioned (guess our publishers were too polite), but we knew had to be improved was the overall look and feel of the application.

In our effort to address the need for data, we laid strong emphasis on enhancing the Reports and Analytics front, where we believe we now provide a very strong value proposition. Publishers can now look at the traffic and monetization at various levels and make data driven decisions based on those. Drill downs are now available at a country, carrier and handset level with visibility into various trends. This should give a strong sense of which categories of traffic are delivering the best monetization for the site.

In order to address the requirement for better control, we created filters with a high level of granularity to specify the type of ads that should NOT be served on the mobile sites. It also allows publishers to block advertisers whose ads are not relevant for the site.

If you would like to try this, simply register your site; turn ON filters and rest assured that the user experience on your site will be maintained intact.

From an ease of use perspective, we redesigned the whole application by tying the logical pieces together. For instance, we made the ad filter creation as a part of site creation. We have also tried hard to make sure that the most performed actions on our application are most visible and intuitive.

As far as the improvement on the look and feel of the application, well…. you are the best judge. As you can see, this offering from InMobi has pretty much been driven by customers like you.

As the next step, we will be working on enhancing the user experience for the Advertiser - in terms of the way they create and run their ads, manage budgets and monitor the performance of their campaign on an ongoing basis. Stay tuned.

Start Ups attracting Top Quality Management

Enterprise Inc on CNBC TV18 talks about how top quality professionals are climbing down the corporate ladder and entering startup territories to help entrepreneurs make their dreams come true. CNBC interviews Sharat Khurana and Naveen Tewari on what does it take to attract top quality management to startups.

ET Now meets Sherpalo Ventures and InMobi

ET Now meets Ram Shriram, a man who is counted as one of the greatest tech investors of all time. He is most well-known for being one of the first investors in Google and is now the founder of a VC firm, Sherpalo Ventures. The show also covers one of Sherpalo Venture’s largest investment in India, InMobi and an investment decision which took all of 20 minutes. Naveen Tewari shares his experience with Sherpalo Ventures.

ET Now meets Mumbai Angels and InMobi

Whether your startup is an idea on paper or just a few months old, the Mumbai Angels, if impressed will give you that seed level cash injection. ET Now meets Sasha Mirchandani and Prashant Choksey to profile the Mumbai Angels and their portfolio company – InMobi, the first company to receive funding from Mumbai Angels. Amit Gupta talks about how Mumbai Angels has been more than just an investor to InMobi.

Distributed ad serving at InMobi

This August has been quite eventful for us. First we re-branded ourselves, as InMobi. Secondly, we fulfilled part of our aspirations to be a global company by setting up a distributed ad server in a US data center. This move has catapulted InMobi in to a different league altogether. It also showcases our commitment to defy all barriers and overcome various technological challenges to serve our customers in the best possible way.

The thought of having distributed node arises with a problem that started with our recent business push in Europe and US market. As our volume started to grow from these continents our publishers reported increased network latency problems between their servers and our servers in India. We optimized India node to a great extent but it was not enough to overcome that natural network response delay of 300ms to 400ms between our locations.

At that moment we knew that we had to do something to support business in their expansion plan to Europe and US. The problem statement was clear, it was about having a distributed node in various continents so that we can provide the best possible response time to our publishers located in those geographies, by avoiding delays caused due to distance. To solve this problem we needed three fundamental changes in our architecture:

1. Decouple the application at architectural and infrastructure level so that it can be distributed and each node can function on its own.
2. Sharing essential information across these nodes so that they can make right decisions in real time, by looking at accurate & time sensitive information.
3. Third problem was to design a mechanism that can merge and process data across nodes for further usage and reporting.

Once the big problem was broken down into parts the only thing left was to design a solution that address each specific problem mentioned above and assemble them to commission a new node at any place where it’s needed. Building a distributed node for a very high scale system was a big task and kudos to our engineers who made it look so simple and finished it in record time. This achievement is quite significant in its own way but it has further fueled our passion and commitment to go extra miles to to serve our customers in a way that no one else can. I am confident that we will push the envelope on such innovations at InMobi, in times to come.

Stay tuned and grow with us.

Mohit Saxena
Head of Technology
InMobi

From mKhoj to InMobi

Like any other start up venture, mKhoj has had its share of ups and downs. We started business by diving into the first business model of solving the local information problem using SMS based search and worked on SMS based monetization as a revenue model which would eventually morph into an SMS Ad Network. At the time, it had seemed like a great problem to solve since the proliferation of PCs was rather weak.

But after a few months into the market, the model did not fare as had been envisaged earlier. The team had failed to clearly understand the cultural aspect of India, where every individual on the road is a source of high quality (& mostly user friendly) information. Thus the demand for the service was not very high and the money was running low.

A few months into the venture the team faced its toughest decision, a decision which would prove to be the turning point in mKhoj’s life. The decision was to abandon the existing business of SMS and focus on the mobile web ecosystem, which had lately started to show signs of a strong future. It was an emotionally charged period for the team as it wasn’t easy to see all the hard work of the past months go to waste and start fresh from ground up.

The next several months were very tough as everyone worked on developing the new product and taking it to the market. Everybody tried to hold a brave face but it was really difficult as a thousand questions were brewing in everybody’s minds about the future of this new venture. The company was running low on money and on morale and the product had still not hit the market so had no paying customers. It was also pretty evident that no investor would invest in the business at that stage.

The team decided to work without pay and also pitched in with their credit cards. The cards were used to run the company till the product was out in the market and started to gain some traction such that the venture capitalists would agree to make the required capital infusion. Team members refrained from making personal purchases using their credit cards because credit limits were getting breached rather quickly. It was these tough periods that really brought the team close and showed great commitment.

As they say, even the worst of times come to an end and things started to look for the team when Kleiner Perkins and Ram Shriram (Sherpalo Ventures) decided to put money into the company. Finally, the hard work of the team, their sacrifice and the risk that each one of them (& their families) had undertaken paid off and helped get mKhoj to a new platform from where it could scale.

Post venture funding, we suddenly faced a new set of challenges. Now the focus shifted to putting together a great team. Initially, there had been 8 people in the company in 2008. Now, exceptional focus was being given on hiring so that only the best people in the industry joined the little but soon-to-be-big start up to take it to the next level.

InMobi, previously mKhoj

By the end of the year over 50 people in 4 offices across the globe had joined the company. By the middle of 2009, growth surpassed all expectations and we grew beyond 75 people across 4 offices in the world. We are now one of the fastest growing mobile advertising networks in the world. Here we are today, ambitious to make it big on the world scale. With that intention, we chose a new name, InMobi, that we think conveys our value proposition greatly.

The story sure seems like a long one but one would like to believe this is still the beginning of an exciting journey of the dream called InMobi!

- Naveen

Moving over to ad code v2

Since the release of the v2 of our ad code, it has been exciting times, working with publishers who have enthusiastically embraced this new version. Today, almost all publishers send us ad requests through ad code v2 except for a few remaining publishers. However I would want that our remaining publishers who have yet not migrated to v2 of the ad code, should also reap the benefit of the improved ad serving logic that is available only via v2 of the ad code. Hence this is my personal request to those who have still not migrated to version 2.0 of our ad code to please do so on an immediate basis.

We value contribution of each and every publisher in our growth and would like to ensure that your monetization with our network is uninterrupted. Hence this request to you to migrate before we officially close support on the earlier version of ad code on September 1, 2009.

Migrating to v2 is a simple process.
Step 1:  Login to your InMobi account.
Step 2: From list of your sites in the ‘My Sites’ tab, click on Retrieve ad code link for your sites that are still using the earlier version of ad code.
Step 3: Select the ad code suitable for your site (Advanced or Basic).
Step 4: Select appropriate language of ad code based on the site requirement (PHP-CURL, .NET, JSP, ASP, RUBY, PERL).
Step 5: Download the corresponding integration manual for reference.

Please note that from September 1st 2009, our system will respond with ads only if the requests are coming from ad code v2.

Warm Regards
KK
Publisher Management

The Dream Called InMobi

Today we’re rebranding and launching ourselves as InMobi, with aspirations to be a global player in the mobile web ecosystem, enthusiasm in our veins and earnestness in our work. The journey so far has been really exciting for me and the team that has come with me all along. This journey, as with most others, started with an inspiration.

The conceptualization of InMobi (previously mKhoj) began in the second half of 2006 when I was visiting India and was intrigued by the continuous proliferation of mobile and the evolving mobile landscape but rather slow innovation on the content side for consumers.

Preliminary thoughts were floated around with a few folks in the mobile industry along the lines of a mobile search engine. Some initial excitement led to a business plan which I took to a friend-angel investor. Somewhat fascinated by this business plan, my friend agreed to introduce me to other investors. At that point I was asked for the name of the company and I came up with the name ‘mKhoj’, khoj meant ‘search’ in Hindi.

Around the same time, I happened to meet a very close friend of mine from my undergrad years, Abhay, at a bar in New Delhi. Over drinks, casual conversation flowed which led to finding out that Abhay was also contemplating a similar idea. It did not take long for us to decide that our destination was the same and as such we began to give shape to the business plan, together. Very soon we met Amit, on a trip to Bangalore and began convincing him to join us on this venture, which hadn’t even been established till then.

Now, we had the business idea, the expertise, the will and the experience. But we still lacked a key ingredient: funding. But as it would happen, fate smiled upon us and on July 26, 2006 I happened to meet Sasha Mirchandani and Prashant Choksey for the first time in a hotel in Delhi. The introduction was made by a common friend and I was floored by the exceptional energy levels of both the guys (despite Sasha being sick that day). The meeting went considerably well and things moved forward quickly after that. Then came September 7, 2006, the most extraordinary day in our and mKhoj’s life. That day a presentation was made in front of the ‘band of angels’, a group of illustrious businessmen of Bombay, who had come together for the first time. The air was filled with tension and we were trying hard to think positively when the wise men around the table gave us a thumbs-up and decided to put their money behind ‘three guys with a power point’.

Now all the loose ends had been tied and we started further work on our brainchild. We worked from Amit’s prior company in Bangalore or from bistros scattered across the city. By the time money was in the bank, it was the end of the year and all of us decided to move to Bombay to start the company. The initial days in Bombay were rather interesting when; we worked out of an empty apartment. During those days, talks were already on with Mohit, who was working with Virgin Mobile in San Francisco, to join us in our efforts as CTO.  Mohit joined the venture a few weeks later after it was initiated.

Thus, with the money in the bank, team in place and the first office of mKhoj, the dream of  ‘three guys with power point’ kicked-off and mKhoj started functioning as a proper corporate company in early 2007.

In my next post I’ll share with you the highlights of our journey from mKhoj to InMobi.

- Naveen