India’s InMobi Ad Platform Sees 53 Pct. Increase In YOY Losses

Indian unicorn startup InMobi reported a net loss of ₹54 crore in the fiscal year ending in March of last year, which is a year-on-year increase of 53 percent compared to the previous one, according to DealstreetAsia.

InMobi offers advertising services to businesses.

According to its finance data, InMobi also reported a 20 percent jump in revenues, going from ₹317.81 crore in fiscal year 2018 to ₹384.21 last year.

Its total expenses for the fiscal year had also risen — in the 2019 fiscal year it was at ₹440.53, up from ₹351.3 in 2018.

Earlier, InMobi reported a 2017 net profit of ₹11.87 crore and ₹287 crore, which mostly came from markets in the U.S. and China where it operates — but it didn’t show any profit after that initial maiden profit.

After that, the company has seen setbacks such as a competitive mobile market and news of layoffs. There was also the $950,000 fine imposed by the Federal Trade Commission against InMobi for wrongfully tracking users’ locations. All of those things had InMobi’s growth set back.

But it’s been trying to rise above that with a series of changes to its business model. In 2018, after its previous finance chief, Manish Dugar, left to join online healthcare platform Practo the year previous, it hired a new finance chief.

And it’s shifted to a business to consumer (B2C) model, called Glance, in which it offers personalized ad-free content on users’ smartphones.

Glance was reportedly in ‘incubation mode’ in 2015 and 2016, and then the next two years were about “product and business development,” according to InMobi chief Naveen Tewari.

InMobi currently has Glance, consumer data marketing tool TruFactor and the InMobi unified marketing cloud under its umbrella.

To date, it’s raised a little over $300 million from investors like SoftBank, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sherpalo Ventures and others. It’s competing against Facebook and Google in the mobile advertising arena, an industry expected to grow to $169 billion by 2023.

InMobi is a unicorn company, meaning it is a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion. Other Indian unicorns include eCommerce platform Udaan and mobile messaging app Hike.