InMobi has appointed four investment banks to advise on its initial public offering. With the backing of SoftBank Group Corporation, InMobi is aiming to raise $1 billion through its planned public offering. For managing the book-running, the company has engaged prominent financial institutions such as Bank of America-Mellon Corp., Jefferies Financial Group Inc. and global firms JPMorgan Chase & Co., among others, and local investment banking units Kotak Mahindra Capital Co. and Axis Capital Ltd.

Reverse-flip strategy and corporate residence

The milestone appointment is a critical move towards an expected public listing of one of India’s oldest tech unicorns in the near future. The firm is set to begin its formal initial public offering soon, targeting a market cap between $5 billion and $6 billion. 

The transition reflects the increasing preference of top Indian consumer-tech and adtech companies toward domestic exchanges for primary market listings. It indicates robust liquidity and continued interest in well-established, technology-based companies.

InMobi is following a planned corporate restructuring exercise before its latest listing to repatriate its head office to India. This is an effective shift considering that recently, the government has accelerated the legalization of mergers and acquisitions to streamline corporate redomiciliation of tech startups. The incorporation of an Indian holding structure is a stepping stone to listing the Indian subsidiary on primary domestic exchanges like the National Stock Exchange and BSE. 

InMobi’s aim with its corporate residence is to provide a direct equity stake in the global operating architecture to domestic institutional and retail investors. The transition also reflects the growing depth of India’s capital markets, which are now showing more promise around the scale of technology IPOs they can absorb and process, which the United States’ stock exchanges traditionally hosted.

Financial dynamics and AI integration

InMobi was established in 2007 by Naveen Tewari, with co-founders Abhay Singhal, Amit Gupta, and Mohit Saxena. InMobi started its journey as a core mobile ad network. After a strategic funding arrangement by SoftBank in 2011, it became the first tech unicorn in India. In the last ten years, they’ve grown into an integrated, multi-product tech engine in mobile advertising, content discovery, and conversational AI.

InMobi Exchange is its modern initiative, a fully global programmatic ad platform that serves more than 1.6 billion Android and iOS monthly active devices in more than 165 countries. Its adtech infrastructure is complemented by an extensive high-growth lockscreen content platform called Glance, which is generally pre-installed on millions of Android smartphones. 

With AI’s help, Glance provides personalized videos, short-video feeds, and live-commerce content right on users’ home-screen lock screens, without needing app downloads. The company has invested heavily in developing its generative AI architecture and commerce stack across its product portfolio to reinforce its long-term competitive moat and public market positioning.

The move to the public markets follows significant changes in its internal equity composition and capitalization. Chief Executive Officer Naveen Tewari continues to be the largest individual shareholder of the company with an equity stake of approximately 40%. 

In a second major development, SoftBank recently sold a significant stake in the company for around $250 million, keeping a residual minority stake in the business. The partial buyback gave the founding team majority control of their combined holdings, which put the management structure ahead of institutional roadshows. 

For operations, the firm has focused on sustainable unit economics and profitability in its core media products and secondary product wagers. InMobi aims to offer the potential public investor a well-rounded financial profile, with robust topline growth from its worldwide advertising platforms and its high-margin consumer engagement efforts fueled by its lock-screen capabilities.

Conclusion

JPMorgan Chase, Jefferies, Kotak Mahindra Capital, and Axis Capital have been announced as the new bookrunners for InMobi, marking a fresh page in the company’s nineteen-year journey. India’s first tech unicorn is set to raise $1 billion at a valuation of $5 billion to $6 billion, as it plans to reverse-flip from Singapore to list in India, which shows the growing attraction of India’s capital markets. InMobi is planning its initial public offering with diversified business verticals such as Glance and a growing AI stack, and will become a bellwether case for mature adtech and consumer technology companies looking to make the plunge into the public markets.