SoftBank-backed InMobi IPO in wait and watch mode amid market rout

Naveen Tewari, the founder of the Indian mobile advertising firm InMobi, looks at a laptop inside his office in Bengaluru, India, September 11, 2015.

A fall in tech stocks globally has made SoftBank-backed InMobi reevaluate plans to tap public markets as it does not want to launch an IPO that will trade at a huge discount like some other new age tech stocks, its top executive told Moneycontrol.

It was reported in March last year that InMobi, a provider of mobile advertising services and India’s first unicorn, was aiming for a US listing by the end of 2021, with plans to raise $1 billion at a valuation of $12-15 billion.

While a lot of internet stocks listed successfully in the US and India in the last year, the sentiment has soured in the last few months, with these stocks taking a huge beating as investors turned cautious on fears of a rate hike and their lofty valuations catching up with their business fundamentals.

Asked about InMobi’s listing plans in the current market, founder Naveen Tewari said, “It is hard for me to answer the question on specificity of IPO timing. It is very hard for any such decision to be made when the market has been down for the last three months. So we will see it at the right moment.”

Asked if the company missed the opportune time for a listing last year and if it can pull off a listing by the end of 2022, he said, “All the stocks that IPOed last year, where are they trading right now? Less than 50 percent? So you know, we have to be careful. We certainly don't want an IPO that goes up and comes down. Because that's not the way you want to be in the market.”

He added that the adtech business is doing well, calling it solid and predictable. “As you can clearly see, we don't raise money in that part of the business ever. It continues to do very, very well for us,” Tewari said.

Lock screen platform Glance, which is part of the InMobi group, raised $200 million in funding last week from Reliance’s Jio Platforms, valuing it at $1.7-1.8 billion.