InMobi announces pay cut for senior employees; to compensate via stock options

Layoffs and salary cuts have become inevitable for startups amidst the lockdown ordered to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Everyone is feeling the heat - be it early-stage, growth stage or even the poster boys of the startup world.

Since the imposition of the lockdown, several firms have already announced job cuts, slashed salaries and have given furloughs. Joining the likes of Zomato, Oyo, FabHotels, Treebo, Ixigo and Bounce is InMobi, which has now planned to slash salaries of its senior employees.

InMobi has decided to cut the salaries of senior employees by 10% but will compensate for the loss by offering stock options, a different strategy from the other companies. 

Naveen Tewari, the founder and group CEO of InMobi, has announced the plan for restructuring of compensation for its employees in a blog post. Tewari wrote that employees will receive a portion of their salary in the form of stock, instead of cash, which starts at 10% of their salaries and the percentage will increase at the leadership level. 

The 13-year-old firm will continue to find ways to minimize the impact on as many people as possible, the post said.

Responding to Entrackr’s queries, InMobi spokesperson also confirmed the development saying that the program has been rolled out only for employees above a certain threshold. However, the mobile advertising platform has no plans for layoffs at the moment.

With more than 1,400 employees, InMobi is spread across 20 offices globally. According to the company, 50% of its revenue comes from North America, 25% from China and rest from Europe and other APAC countries.

Last year, InMobi had restructured its operations to give more autonomy to its mature business verticals. Now, it has three subsidiaries - advertising technology under InMobi UMC, data business TruFactor, and consumer content entity Glance.

In India, the unicorn had also acquired video-sharing platform Roposo to consolidate it with InMobi. So far, the company has raised over $320 million across several rounds including $45 million in its ongoing Series D round.