IMIMobile plans buyouts to tap US, Western European markets

IMIMobile, a Hyderabad-based VAS infrastructure and services provider, is planning to acquire a company each in the US and Western Europe to tap the mobile advertising market there.

The closely-held company has already identified a couple of firms in the two geographies, which have a strong customer base and product line that could exploit its technology and services, VR Vishwanath (Vish), chairman and chief executive officer of IMIMobile, told Business Standard.

“The European acquisition is expected to be completed in two months, which will add $10 million (approximately Rs 42 crore) to our topline in the first year. The US buyout will happen next year, once we stabilise our operations in Western Europe,” he said while refusing to divulge more details.

Through the proposed buyouts, IMIMobile will be offering to the US and European mobile advertising markets its recently launched Ad-Ring, which is touted as the industry’s first fully-integrated mobile advertising platform. The US and European mobile advertising markets put together are projected to touch $20 billion in the next three years.

Ad-Ring, built on IMIMobile’s Da Vinci service delivery platform technology, enables to produce and deliver multi-format ad campaigns through an array of media including SMS, WAP Portal, voice, MMS, caller ring back tone and video streaming.

“Ad-Ring is currently under deployment at Spice’s Punjab and Karnataka circles. Our idea is to have this deployed at the 50 operators including 30 international players that we currently associate with, and those that would be brought in through our proposed acquisitions,” he said.

It at present derives 60 per cent of its revenues from voice and WAP services, while 15 per cent flows in from licence sales. “We expect our mobile advertising business to contribute 20 per cent to our revenues in two years,” Vish added.

The company is setting up a convergence lab in Hyderabad at an investment of $1 million (Rs 4.2 crore). The lab will develop 3G and 4G-related innovations and create a live environment to Indian operators. It will be ready in three months, he added.

The eight-year-old company employs 320 people worldwide, of which 220 work out of its VAS Network Operations Centre (VNOC) in Hyderabad. It already has a convergence lab at its Mauritius office.

Vish said the company aimed to become a ‘white label’ (providing technologies on a managed services model) services provider to 100 international operators in two years and 500 operators in five years.

The company raised $10 million (around Rs 42 crore) from US-based venture capital investor Pequot Ventures in a second round of funding in June 2006, with the first being $3 million (Rs 12.6 crore) from UK-based NewMedia Spark in 2005.