InMobi to invest $100 Mn in its subsidiary TruFactor to help telcos manage data

Mobile advertising and discovery platform InMobi will invest $100 million in its newly launched independent business unit for telcos TruFactor.

The investment, which will be put in over the next three years, will enable telcos to transform their digital assets into strategic knowledge and provide a competitive advantage.

The new data platform will mainly aim to create better customer experience for telecom firms data through curation and data analysation. It is built on the capabilities of Pinsight Media, which was acquired by InMobi in October 2018.

TruFactor has partnered with Microsoft to bring its secure data platform to market through Microsoft Azure, InMobi declared at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

We want to use it to help other telcos manage their datasets and privacy issues," said Naveen Tewari, founder, and chief executive at InMobi.

InMobi currently garners more than 70 per cent of its revenue from US and China. India, with over 400 million smartphone users, is also emerging as a large market.

It claims to have grown in 40 per cent in the last one year.

Ever since its launch in 2007, Inmobi registered a phenomenal growth in India and China delivering mobile-first ads. Six years later it went to the US market, which has over 40 per cent of the world advertising market.

So far, InMobi has raised a total of $320.6M in funding. In Sept 2015, it raised its last funding of $100 million from a Debt Financing round.

Meanwhile, It also faced a tough time when one after another its partners left the firm. Soon after losing gaming Supercel, which claimed to contribute around 7 percent of its revenue, it got into tapping enterprise customers. The company's enterprise strategy and partnership with Microsoft and Sprint helped it bring it on track.

In January 2018, the company had acquired Los Angeles-based startup AerServ, an inventory, and audience monetisation technology platform for mobile publishers, for $90 million in a cash and stock deal.

Through the acquisition InMobi aimed at increasing monetisation by 25-30 per cent from its existing set of clients, besides helping secure new clients.

According to IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, more than half of search revenue is from mobile, two-thirds of banner revenue is mobile, over half of the video revenue is mobile and three in four audio dollars are from mobile.

The info related to development is sourced from the Mint report.