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Naveen Tewari, co-founder of InMobi, shared about the ups and downs of building a multi-million dollar company

November27, 20194 min read

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InMobi took birth when the word start-up was gradually becoming a part of everyones daily conversations. Before the start-up culture boomed, InMobi had already scaled heights. It was founded in 2007 by Naveen Tewari, Mohit Saxena and Abhay Singhal as mKhoj, an SMS-based search and monetization business in Mumbai, and its name got changed to InMobi in 2009.

It became one of Indias most successful mobile marketing and advertising platform provider having a global presence and touching the lives of over a billion people. Top brass of the investment ecosystem including SoftBank, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Buyers, Sherpalo and University of California in partnership with Ratan Tata made investments in the company.

Tewari talked about the ups and downs of building a multi-million dollar company at the recently held Ascent Conclave 2019.

Dream Big

He shared that in the early days of his life, entrepreneurship was not taken seriously. He even refused the job of a branch manager to become an entrepreneur.

Tewari shared that in the initial years of building the business, the co-founders did not have enough money to buy a Wi-Fi plan. Therefore, they would take turns at the lobby of a prestigious hotel in Delhi, buy coffee and use the free Wi-Fi to work.

The only thing that we had was a dream. The zeal to make the dream a reality was so strong that it helped Tewari and the other co-founders overcome all the hurdles that came in their path.

Related Article:Changing The World of Mobile Advertising

Making Decisions on Gut

For Tewari, the idea to launch InMobi rose from the inner depths of his being. He wanted to spearhead the global Internet space which was bursting into the ecosystem in the early part of the 21st century. He would often ask himself, What can we do to make content free? There were several challenges including the lack of mobile Internet in India besides the country not having a mobile advertising Internet market that they had to deal with in order give their ideas a concrete shape.

Dealing with low is what is very important. This is one strategy that he swears by even today.

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Never Give Up

The anxiety of getting investors onboard is the worry of every entrepreneur. Tewari was no exception.

He shared that several investors closed their doors on their idea. However, they did not give up. We kept on talking and talking to several investors, and then one day an investor came and said, Well, we like what you are doing.

Faith

Tewari said a lot of people had advised him to setup the company in other parts of the world where it is much easier to setup business. But it was faith and an ardent wish to make a difference in the Indian subcontinent that gave him the will to launch operations in India.

He also said that having faith in ones employees is also important. He said, We have to give our engineers a chance to create products that can reach the global stage.

Today, he said his products touch 1.5 to 2 billion people.

Related Articles:India's Early Unicorn Company Talks About Maintaining Startup Culture During Tough Times

Speed

Tewari has built a global company. He has offices across Europe and the US. InMobi has also done several acquisitions including that of Sprout, a platform for building HTML5-based ads. He attributes speed as an important factor that has helped it succeed. Speed of movement was very critical at that point in time. Tewari also said they were making a lot of mistakes as well but they possessed speed and aggression, they were able to scale inexplicably.

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5 Traits That Helped This Entrepreneur Succeed and Go Global - Entrepreneur

Read: There is too much stuff

According to Clarence Lee, a marketing professor at Cornell University, gift guides have become particularly effective because nearly everything people consume online, from streaming services to crowdsourced travel reviews, conditions us to seek out internet recommendations as a way to feel confident in our choices. One of the key drivers in the Western world thats creating this reliance on user reviews is the rise of Amazon, Lee says. The retail behemoths near-endless options can hardly be digested without help from an algorithm or knowledgable human. Sometimes that help comes from reviews on Amazon, but one of the most popular services that The Strategist offers its readers, according to Swerdloff, is its writers ability to pull the best products from the depths of the online-shopping giant; she refers to her staff as Amazonologists.

Like most problems in life, though, what to get the most finicky person you know cant always be solved by scrolling Amazon for hours, even if that scrolling is done by the pros. The Strategist makes recommendations all year, so it has a trove of information about the things real people buy and like, based on months of interviews for other guides. It might be something I learned from a What I Cant Live Without with, like, Victoria Beckham or something, Swerdloff says. We do guides to things that might sell out and we talk to trend forecasters. Doctors, Deadheads, movie stars, Radio City RockettesThe Strategist has asked them all what theyd like to receive, at one point or another, and used their answers to direct the public at large. I became a fan of the site after one of its writers recommended a particularly waterproof $11 mascara, allowing me to break my years-long addiction to a Chanel version almost three times as expensive.

Read: The joy of no-gift Christmas

That dedication to telling people about good stuff, whether its done by YouTube celebrities who personally test makeup for hours every day or reporters who ask hundreds of people about the things they actually like each year, is what keeps the gift-guide economy humming along. Fundamentally, the internets gift curators are profitable because theyre doing something that readers want: Breaking down the webs vast, bloated retail apparatus into a form that humans with a life and a family and a job can confidently navigate when they sit down at their laptop after the kids go to bed, ready to tick Christmas shopping off their to-do lists.

For most of the people who make gift guides, its not exactly easy money. Nord and Swerdloff both mentioned how time-consuming it is to make decent recommendationsthe research and reporting involved arent always obvious to those merely scrolling through. Gift-guide season was certainly the bane of my own existence when I was charged with creating them. Thats because the expansion of online shopping hasnt just made gift guides something readers seek out; its also made many people sophisticated enough to spot a bad one. We do imagine our readers being smart and savvy and being able to smell garbage from a mile away, Swerdloff says. Ours are not just a bunch of random crap.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

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What Happens When You Buy From Gift Guides - The Atlantic

With the holiday shopping season ramping up and Black Friday and Cyber Monday just a few days away, ETFs focusing on e-commerce, including the ProShares Online Retail ETF (NYSEArca: ONLN), are in focus.

Up 13.20% year-to-date, ONLN seeks investment results, before fees and expenses, that track the performance of the ProShares Online Retail Index. The index tracks retailers that principally sell online or through other non-store channels. The index uses a modified market-capitalization weighted approach, is rebalanced monthly and is reconstituted annually. Retailers may include U.S. and non-U.S. companies. To be eligible, retailers must: be classified as an online retailer, an e-commerce retailer, or an internet or direct marketing retailer, according to standard industry classification systems; have a market capitalization of at least $500 million; have a six-month daily average value traded of at least $1 million; and meet other requirements.

Shopping and consumer trends are changing as more buyers rely on the convenience of online retailers to quickly and effectively meet their discretionary needs. As the retail landscape changes, investors can also capitalize on the trend through ETFs that target the e-commerce segment.

ProShares Online Retail, for example, has almost a quarter of its entire assets in Amazon, and another 13% in Chinese Internet giant Alibaba, reports Reuters. If you want to bet on the big winners and Amazon has certainly been a big winner that would be the way to go, said Todd Rosenbluth, head of ETF and mutual fund research at independent research firm CFRA.

Online retail has been rapidly expanding. Global e-commerce sales doubled between 2014 and 2018 to $2.8 trillion annually from $1.3 trillion. By 2020, an estimated 2 billion people are expected to be digital shoppers or a 19% jump from 2018 levels, as more people, notably from emerging economies where barely half the population is online, gain access to the internet. Almost one-third of consumers are already shopping online at least weekly and 75% at least once a month.

The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce announced today that the estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the third quarter of 2019, adjusted for seasonal variation, but not for price changes, was $154.5 billion, an increase of 5.0 percent (0.4%) from the second quarter of 2019, said the Commerce Department in a note out last week.

Other recent data points cement the case for ONLN.

Online shopping alone is expected to amount to $143.7 billion over the last two months of the year, a 14.1% increase over last year, according to projections by Adobe Analytics, reports Reuters.

For more investing strategies, visit our Core ETF Channel.

The opinions and forecasts expressed herein are solely those of Tom Lydon, and may not actually come to pass. Information on this site should not be used or construed as an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy, or a recommendation for any product.

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An Online Retail ETF Ramping Up And Ready to Rally - ETF Trends

Mike Morrison, Chris Shepherd, Sean Wheat, Jeff Montgomery at the 2019 A Sheltered Life Gala.

HOUSTON (PRWEB) November 26, 2019

A Sheltered Life held their annual fundraiser gala this past Friday, where they raised $148,786, pushing them past $1 million in overall donations since its founding in 2012. Funds will be shared between International Cooperating Ministries, which builds churches and Hope Centers around the world, and Boys and Girls Country, a Houston-area home for children.

The fundraiser included 11 live auctions and dozens of items and experiences up for silent auction. The highest bids of the night were for the amazing opportunity to have James Beard Award-winning chef Chris Shepherd, of Underbelly Hospitality, create and cook a meal at the home of the winner. Shepherds generous donation of his time amounted in $33,000 raised for A Sheltered Life.

Founded in 2013 by three high-school friends, A Sheltered Life was created to help the millions of children throughout the world who are without a home. Jeff Montgomery, Mike Morrison and Sean Wheat traveled to Medelin, Colombia in 2012, where they witnessed first-hand the lack of resources for the many orphaned children in the area.

It struck our hearts when we went to Colombia, said Sean Wheat. Upon their return, they decided they could do more than just write a check and created A Sheltered Life.

Though each man is modest about his achievements, calling themselves just three guys, the power of their friendship has helped with the building of 37 orphanages around the world as well as having an impact in the Houston area. And each year at the gala, they are also giving a platform for two ministries to tell everyone what great work they are doing, says Jeff Montgomery.

2019 Sponsors included: Southern Glazers Wine and Spirts, Gulf Winds, TopSpot Internet Marketing, Comfortable Home, Mongoose Freight Solutions, Rachel and Mark Terry, Trademark Engine, Lead Construction, Vortech Contracting, Swyft Filings, Southern American Insurance, J. Martin & Company PC, Kirksey Gregg Productions LLC, Lyon Insurance Agency, The Ballroom at Bayou Place, and Mikes Superior Dental Lab.

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Local Charitable Organization Hits $1 Million Milestone to Help Build Orphanages at Home & Abroad - PR Web

More people will meet their partner online than offline by 2035 if current trends continue.

New research by dating platform eharmony and the Imperial College Business School also pinpointed 2037 as the year when the majority of babies in the UK are born to parents who met via the internet.

The Future of Dating report, based on data from eharmony and birth rate projections from the Office for NationalStatistics, examined how technology is changing social interactions.

It found that around a third (32%) of relationships started between 2015 and 2019 started online, compared to only 19% between 2005 and 2014.

By 2035, it says the UK will reach the "tipping point" with more than 50% of relationships beginning online.

And the research found there was a dividend from online dating, with 47% of those asked saying they felt that the internet makes it easier for introverted people to meet a partner.

Romain Bertrand, head of marketing at eharmony, said: "It's very positive to see that online dating is set to continue opening doors for singles into the future.

"At eharmony we are consistently updating our site functionality and unique Compatibility Matching System to ensure we remain on the front foot when it comes to creating online relationships.

"What's more, our long-term partnership with Imperial College Business School continues to give us valuable insight into how the world of dating and relationships might look in decades to come and how society will continue to evolve over time."

Dr Paolo Taticchi, principal teaching fellow at Imperial College Business School, said: "The digital world has streamlined the online dating process - making it easier to find someone while ensuring that they match your criteria.

"2035 will be an instrumental year for finding love and begin a new era of 21st century dating."

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Finding love online: More than half of couples set to meet via the internet - Sky News