Adtech unicorn InMobi to lay off 125 employees

The InMobi group is planning to let go of more than 100 employees, making it the company’s second layoff within a year.

As per a CNBC-TV18 report, the advertising technology unicorn will let go of 125 employees from its global workforce of 2,500. The move will impact roughly 5% of the total headcount.

“As artificial intelligence (AI) has been sweeping the world, the market needs and the expectations that our customers — brands, agencies and developers — have of us, are changing rapidly. The products for addressing the market needs and customer expectations, the skill sets for delivering those products and the go-to-market strategies are going to be significantly different from those of the past decade,” said an InMobi spokesperson.

“The changes that we are bringing in at the organisation level are a proactive step for us to address the above needs, stay competitive and win globally in this decade and beyond,” added the spokesperson.

In January 2023, the SoftBank-backed company fired 50-70 employees.

This move makes InMobi the second large group from the Indian startup ecosystem to fire employees citing the implementation of AI. Last month, Paytm fired 1,000 employees. InMobi, however, emphasized that this is performance-based and not a cost-cutting measure.

In July 2019, InMobi created a separate entity Glance which also turned unicorn in December 2020. Along with Glance, InMobi holds two more subsidiaries under the umbrella entity: advertising technology under InMobi UMC and data business TruFactor.

While InMobi’s Singapore entity is yet to file its annual financial report for FY23, its Indian entity reported a 41% revenue jump to Rs 589.57 crore in FY23 from Rs 415.93 crore in FY22 The firm’s profit after tax(PAT) was Rs 113.2 crore for FY23.