What acquisition? InMobi CEO Naveen Tewari talks of IPO, not sell-out

Rubbishing a news report of an imminent takeover, InMobi chief executive Naveen Tewari today made it clear that the Mountain View-based global search engine Google is not contemplating to buy out the Indian firm. The Economic Times carried a news report yesterday saying that Google is in talks to buy the Bangalore-based mobile advertising network InMobi. However, dismissing the acquisition rumours, Tewari told New York Times that “no acquisition discussions were occurring and he did not know how the rumors started". [caption id=“attachment_2150267” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Naveen Tewari, CEO, InMobi[/caption] He also said InMobi has always been talking to other companies about partnerships, but there’s no such plan to sell off the company. “I want to keep InMobi independent and eventually sell stock in an initial public offering,” Tewari said. “We are the only large mobile advertising player outside of Google and Facebook,” he said. “I would argue that anyone would be happy having us as an asset. But, I wound not want the company and its 900 employees to be someone else’s asset.” “There’s a huge level of pride in taking this to an IPO in India,” he said. “And I think we’re going to do that.” InMobi was founded in 2007 by Naveen Tewari, Amit Gupta, Mohit Saxsena and Abhay Singhal. As a start-up it has been widely successful in India and as The Economic Times report notes it has roped in clients like “Yamaha Motor Co, Microsoft, Adidas, Lancome”. The company has seen over 138 billion monthly ad impressions, has over one billion monthly active users and claims to have seen 2.6 billion App Downloads tracked on their platforms. The company’s investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sherpalo Ventures and SoftBank. InMobi provides ad-platforms for companies with a focus on mobile-first and currently is competing with the big-guns like Facebook and Google when it comes to mobile advertising. According to The Economic Times report, Google has seen increasing competition from Facebook on the mobile advertising front and thus is looking to acquire InMobi in order to beef up its advertising platforms. However, Google already owns a mobile ad network AdMob.