Deepak Panigrahy
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Google & InMobi

Posted on by Posted in Advertisement, Africa, Apple, Bay Area, Business, China, Entrepreneurship, Events, General, Google, IIT, India, Indian Economy, Inspiration, iPhone, IPL, ISB, Management, Marketing, Sales, Success, US Economy, USA, Views Leave a comment

Today, as I was reading through the article about InMobi, an Indian startup that has been consistently getting rave reviews in the market. I have been always been a huge fan of Young Turks and that is one thing which has always inspired and motivated me through thick and thin lines of my career and I am sure it will continue to do so. I take this opportunity to thank CNBC TV18 for such an amazing program. But this article is not about CNBC TV18, it is about InMobi.

Till early this year, I don’t know why but I never heard about this startup at all. But with this article, I was refreshed about my memory of InMobi when I first heard about it in January. As I browsed through their website today, it was a great feeling. Time is changing and so does the tides have started to flow from the reverse direction. Gone were those days when the market was driven from developed countries like USA. I was not fortunate to be in the Silicon Valley because I still pity on those people who go for monotonous jobs in the Silicon Valley but I can definitely fortunate to be at a place where markets are being driven today and I see that happening more often from hereon. This whole thing is exciting and being an aspiring Entrepreneur, I do look forward to jumping into this sea sometime soon. InMobi is a classic example of what I am talking about, Naveen Tiwari – an IIT graduate going for his MBA at Harvard Business School and then returning back after a brief stint to drive a business from India.

Let us take a look at the Mobile Advertising industry and InMobi today in this post.

InMobi:

  • InMobi started as Mkhoj. I remember using it occasionally earlier but I rarely used Internet on mobile phones those days. What amazed me with InMobi was not only they were smart to tap into an opportunity but also re-built their whole business from scratch even after Mkhoj. I have always believed that Entrepreneurs should always be smart to tap opportunities in the market and should not resist change and that is what defines leadership. Leaders don’t talk about existing systems and processes but they talk about how the system can be challenged for the good. Resisting change is not the sign of growth and prosperity. In my view, InMobi led this aspect by a perfect example.
  • The 60:40 revenue model is very exciting. Basically, InMobi connects the advertisers and publisher. Naveen mentioned in his interview that if $100 comes from the advertiser, InMobi gives $60 to the publisher, keeping $40 within itself. According to me, before hearing to this numbers, I never believed that a high share as much as 40% could be made this way. There are lot of players who are into advertising domains and the most common of them are the ones who divert traffic to certain blogs. But honestly speaking, I never heard of anyone mentioning as high percentage of share as 40% earlier. Kudos to the InMobi team for pulling this through.
  • The Management team of InMobi comes from varied backgrounds like MBAs, BTechs from top class schools like IITs, ISB, XLRI, HBS and XLRI to name a few. This makes the team very strong. I am not surprised why such a team should not get funded and especialy when they are doing so good.
  • InMobi has given companies like Google run for its money. InMobi is in over 140 countries in the world today serving ads to over 200 million users uniquely every month across the globe. In Japan and Europe, it is number 2. In United States where we have entered about 7-8 months ago, it is number 3 or number 4 in the market.  Isn’t it really interesting? Yes it is.
  • Naveen already talked about acquisitions and according to him, InMobi will be acquiring its first company in 3-4 months. Amazing work and my prediction is that they might either buy someone in the US or China/Korea. Why US? Because by buying in US, InMobi can give the open war with Google and Apple in the market. With Google buying AdMob and Apple buying Quattro Wireless, it will be a very good competition to watch for when an Indian company declaring big on the US shores. Why China/Korea? Because InMobi has expansion plans in these areas because of obvious big user space. Acquiring a company in China/Korea can give InMobi quick access to its vast market.
  • For people interested in this space, I would strongly recommend to go through some of the case studies of InMobi. Some of the case studies are quite appealing. I have a personal experience of their presence with Reebok T-Shirt ad during IPL and I quite enjoyed it. Going through the other case studies could give very nice perspectives.

Lets now come to the Mobile Advertising space, in general. I know that there is a lot of buzz in the air for mobile startups. With official launch of 3G in India, the whole VC industry and Entrepreneurs are going ga-ga over it. Even one of my own initiatives, might go that way in future but as of now, I am closely watching this space. One more addition to this space, would be tablets. Android and Apple are going to have an awesome time of their life. The curiosity to explore this space has made me to buy a 3G phone and have also, recently ordered iPad 2 for my own person experiments. More on the personal front, sometime later but lets try to put some interesting facts that I collected while reading through the consumer and market trend reports of InMobi. Kindly remember these facts are directly taken from the reports of InMobi website and I hold no guarantee of correctness of data.

  • Informa Telecoms & Media estimates that the global mobile data services market , including mobile advertising, was worth
    U.S. $224 billion in 2010. Over the next four years the market will increase to U.S. $340 billion in 2014.
  • 15 emerging countries – China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Russia, Poland and Ukraine – offer substantial investment opportunities for the telecom and advertising industries due to the sheer volume of mobile subscriptions in these markets, and continuing mobile penetration. It is not surprising to note that 30% of mobile data services revenues were generated by these 15 countries in 2010. So, what do you feel is driving these revenues in these countries? Obviously, the low cost feature-rich mobile phones. Visit India and watch any person, to day there might be more mobile phones in India than the toilets.
  • According to Informa, the mobile phone subscriber market of India and China alone will be around 734 million in 2014 from 334 million in 2010.
  • Informa also quotes that the global mobile advertising revenues will rise from $3.5 Bn in 2010 to $24 Bn by 2015, with Asia Pacific contributing to 31% of the share, led by India and China.
  • InMobi research gives very impressive signals on usage of mobile advertisements by consumers when they get free apps or 10% discount on their phone bill. A significant number of consumers might also be attracted to personalized ads. At the same time, consumers have been found to have less attention to free and useful ads.
  • Comfort level of consumers with the mobile advertisements is one of the biggest strong findings in the InMobi research. People seem to be very comfortable rather being apprehensive.
  • InMobi grew by 21% from December, 2010 to March, 2011 giving strong signals of global rise in mobile advertising industry.
  • The Key driver of markets now is the smartphones, which in itself grew by 34%.
  • Android took over as the most used OS over iPone OS. Nokia OS still continues to lead the market share but Android and iPhone are closing on it. The recent Nokia-Microsoft Partnership is a clear example of worries of Nokia losing its mobile platform share rapidly.
  • Android and Apple are clear favorites in the OS platform in both Europe and US while Apple is the largest manufacturer of mobile phones in both US and Europe. The market of US is primarily driven by smartphones where the growth is as high as 50% in the 90 days with Apple growing the most due to its tie-up with Verizon.

Personally, overall, I feel mobile advertising space is going to be a very interesting space to look forward to. I feel more and more Indian companies are going to give US companies a run for its money in future. Its the time for India and we are stepping into a golden era. More companies like InMobi are going to start from emerging markets to penetrate later into developed markets of US, Japan and Europe. I see a brand new Silicon Valley being built but this time, we will be in the driver seat. I would love to see the next “Black Swan” of this world happening from India and I hope to be part of this amazing event.

References:

  1. CNBC TV18 Naveen’s Interview on Young Turks – http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/check-out-who-is-giving-googlerun-for-its-money_537155.html
  2. InMobi Company – http://www.inmobi.com/
  3. InMobi Research – http://www.inmobi.com/research/
  4. InMobi Company – http://www.inmobi.com/company/
  5. InMobi Blog – http://www.inmobi.com/inmobiblog/

Power Learnings from Steve Jobs

Posted on by Posted in Apple, Bay Area, Business, Electronics, Inspiration, iPhone, Management, Marketing, Steve Jobs, Success, Views Leave a comment

As I read this article, I lost myself with Steve Jobs. I, still, remember when I first read about Steve Jobs in iCon. I had heard about Steve earlier but the book made me fall in live with his leadership style. I always hoped that someday I could have made to one Apple Conference and meet this iconic personality, who has so much to offer with his individual presence: management, presentation, leadership, perseverance and many more. As Steve Jobs announced his second indefinite medical leave, Apple shares were bound to take a beating and I feel it should not have surprised many other like me. This post is about analyzing few points that the article tries to address about Steve Jobs and the POWER. As I have consistently mentioned in my earlier posts, we, Indians, are little bad with powers and History has proved it again and again. Most of us have a bad notion of POWER and for us, POWER is just another way to utter sentences like ” Do you know who I am or I am your —————- (You fill in the blanks and bang you are that) and mark your presence without any personal significance. Individuals find ways to stamp their authority everytime.

But lets come back to the article, I am referring to. The first power lesson the article points to is :

“power can result from sheer drive, persistence, resilience, and the ability to tolerate conflict”

Steve Jobs is definitely an inspirational figure for the above lesson. I agree with the author when he mentions that Jobs persisted, sticking with his same focus on the user interface, his fundamental vision of ease of use and cool design, but also learned from the setbacks. People who would have seen “Pirates of Silicon Valley” would know the history that Apple was once written off the radar and so does Jobs. But he held on to his dream and vision only to come back strongly later. Remember his last turnaround, he was sick. The whole world wrote him off, media said Jobs is gone but he again came back only to introduce another killer product – iPad. So hold on and hold tight to your dreams.

The second power lesson the article points to is:

“power can come through the projection of an image of strength that may not yet be the reality”

Remember, what apple store has done to various software developers. It has given a platform for enthusiastic software developers to pursue tehir passion yet not only make money but also become famous. Stanford did not think at all to introduce a course in its computer science curriculum that promotes students to develop apple software application as part of its course. Pulse, an iPad application, is the recent success and latest sensation resulting from it. Android and Nokia followed the store concept of success with their own stores. But Apple did it first. So, powerful people project an image of strength and sustainability.

The third power lesson the article points to is:

“likeability is not a prerequisite to power”

Great and the one thing that I personally love the most. It is not necessary that all powerful people are likeable but as a matter of fact, very few are. It is a very well known fact that Steve Jobs is sometimes heavily criticized for his attitude and actions. One of the example that the article cites is a prime example: “Being Steved”. Being Steved is the official term for Apple employees getting fired by Steve Jobs. In the incident mentioned in the article, when the employee was packing up his things after getting fired by Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs comes by and inquires. And says, you are re-hired. I have personally heard of stories about people who were fired by Steve Jobs only to leverage on the opportunity of getting fired by Steve Jobs to make it big in their life.

Bottom line is: Apple is a success and a lot of its credit goes to Steve Jobs. He is a visionary person, may not be liked by all but he is a successful figure who knew how to make his own ways. Not to forget, his charismatic presence only puts the tagline that we see on Apple products. Personally, I feel this time the medical leave might last a little bit longer and may be a good strategy for Apple to prepare its successor while the market accepts the change and accepts the new Apple as we love today.

Source Article: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/01/steve_jobs_a_study_in_power.html