The Venture Intelligence Blog

Silicon Valley lore has several famous episodes of acquisition talks that did not materialize: from that of Google by Excite (whose CEO apparently refused to pay up $75,000) and by Yahoo  (when the Google founders walked away from a $3-B offer) and that of Yahoo (for $44.6 B) by Microsoft . In March 2015, the lore extended to Indian shores when,  InMobi - which dares to combat Google and Facebook in the mobile advertising segment - walked away from a $1 billion offer from the search engine giant (according to multiple media reports, sample:  Business Insider ). Will  InMobi CEO Naveen Tewari's decision to walk away  turn out as well as that of Google's own or more Yahoo like? Only time will tell. But questions are being raised as to why, when other Indian startups like Flipkart, Snapdeal and Ola are able to attract investments at   valuations of multiple billions of dollars with seeming ease  over the last couple of years, hasn't InMobi (that las...

Extract from The Economic Times profile of the mobile advertising company made famous by the recent $200 million investment that it attracted from SoftBank: On Raising Funds From Ram Shriram . There was a phase when credit cards of the entire founding team were used to just pay salaries! With little success in raising funds from sceptic Indian investors, I decided to take a flight to Silicon Valley, where our venture received positive response. Everyone believed in the power of the mobile internet. I was introduced to Ram Shriram and I was really looking at it as a once in a lifetime experience more than anything else. About 20 minutes into the presentation, Ram suddenly got up and said “Close the presentation, we are funding this. What is the execution plan?” I was in a state of shock not only because of his reaction but also because there was no execution plan to show him at that stage whatsoever. On InMobi's International Expansion. As we evaluated the market, we soo...