InMobi's challenge to Google, Facebook and the battle of duopoly

Bengaluru-based ad-tech firm InMobi has tied up with Microsoft. Together, they could break the duopoly of Google and Facebook in the digital advertising space

When Ravi Krishnaswamy quit India’s largest e-commerce company Flipkart last October to join ad-tech firm InMobi as its chief technology officer (CTO), he already had an inkling into an important business development brewing there. The Bengaluru-based company was in talks with Microsoft to combine their powers to break the duopoly of Google and Facebook in the digital advertising space.

Krishnaswamy, himself a Microsoft veteran who had spent 17 years building tools for developers and the framework for its cloud computing platform Azure, managed to close the deal within six months. In June this year, the two companies announced their strategic partnership,