In conversation with…InMobi!

Yet another monotonous day was coming to an end when suddenly at around midnight I was asked to interview two of the biggest business tycoons that IIT Kanpur has produced. Mr. Navin Tewari and Mr. Abhay Singhal, founders of InMobi, an innovative mobile technology company, were here to interact with the campus junta and I caught up with them for a quick interview.

I quickly ran through the InMobi website and their Wikipedia page and was awestruck to find that InMobi is a multi-million dollar firm and in Mobile Advertising it ranks 2nd globally only after Google. Its ability to challenge industry leaders such as Apple & Google and pioneering innovation in the ad space has enabled InMobi win a coveted spot in MIT Technology Review’s 50 most disruptive companies of 2013.

InMobi, earlier known as mKhoj, started as an SMS-based search platform with initial funding from Mumbai Angels. In 2007, the company pivoted to a more scalable platform, mobile advertising. After the business model change, mKhoj re-branded itself to InMobi and received two rounds of funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures and is also being currently backed by SoftBank. InMobi serves over a billion ads daily with more than 690 million users spread across 165 nations.

I was caught off-guard and was totally unprepared for the talk but somehow I gathered my nerve and went to meet two of the greatest IIT Kanpur Alumni at the New SAC (Student Activity Centre). Reaching there, I saw a setting perfect for an engaging talk with a group of students already there to meet the duo. Mr. Naveen gave us humorous and interesting insights from the time he spent here as a student. He shared with us his fond memories of Antaragni (annual inter college cultural festival of IIT Kanpur) and the classes he used to bunk with his friends.

Mr. Naveen was asked whether he would be willing to invest in a good business idea to which he gave a straight-forward response. He said that InMobi is a profit based company and doesn’t believe in funding entrepreneurial ventures. The duo being successful entrepreneurs they answered queries on start-ups and entrepreneurship in general.

As always, there was a joker in the pack, who came up with a question that made Mr. Tewari laugh. He had asked, “I have 10 start-up ideas; can you tell me which one would be successful?”

“Only God can answer this question”, said Mr. Tewari pointing at the bitter reality of a low start-up success rate and the uncertainties in Entrepreneurship.

Another obvious question of talk was-“What made you leave your job and venture into entrepreneurship?”
Mr. Abhay frankly replied that it was primarily the fear of writing codes that made him do so. “I never wanted to spend my life in front of a computer, writing codes day-in and day-out,” he added. Another question that soon followed was that how did he manage to get a job after graduation. He amused us with his answer saying he mugged the whole book on data processing a day before and ‘vomited’ it out on the interview day. He also mentioned that grades are not an indicator of one’s knowledge of the subject as in his case getting an ‘A’ grade in coding courses wasn’t equivalent to understanding them.

And no session can get over without the ‘Fundas’, as we call them. Mr. Abhay gave a word of advice to all budding entrepreneurs emphasizing that academics must be given prime importance so that there is something to fall back upon if one fails in business. According to them the mantra to success in Entrepreneurship is ‘follow your instincts’ and to ‘think from the beneficiary’s perspective’ as it is the customers that drive your business.

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(L to R) Mr. Abhay Singhal, Mr. Amit Gupta and Mr. Naveen Tewari at the DAA Ceremony[/caption]

Mr. Naveen Tewari, Mr. Abhay Singhal and Mr. Amit Gupta (co-founder of InMobi) were awarded the prestigious Distinguished Alumnus Awards (DAA) for excellence in entrepreneurship by IIT Kanpur on 8th November 2013.

BY: Vardaan Bhatia
EDITED BY: Tathagat Gupta & Akshay Mahajan
Image Credits: IIT-K Alumni Association and www.dreamstime.com