Why Inmobi May
be India's
Most Innovative
Company
The mobile ad platform that has Google and Facebook in its sights
is pushing he envelope by focusing on its most precious resource — people
"That has been one of the keys to our growth making sure we
get the right people in from the beginning. If you get that right, you hire amazing people, they'll be fine, and they'll do amazing things"
Laszlo Bock, HR head, Google, at a Forbes Reinventing
America conference in May
Till
2012, it wasn't as if Naveen Tewari and the three other
cofounders weren't signing on the right people for the eight-year -young InMobi. It's just that leading them was now becoming cumbersome, as the numbers got larger. The quartet were
wrapped
up in scaling what they claim is today the world's largest
and most powerful independent mobile advertising platform. In four months -betweenApril and July, 2012 -the company's employee base surged from 200 to 900.
“We
hired people to be on a mas sive growth trajectory,“
recalls 37-year-oldTewari.
That
growth, however, was proving elusive.
What prevailed instead was chaos: people had overlapping responsibilities, the 700 new hires had lit tle clue about
InMobi
-why they were brought in, and what they had to do.
Result: unrest nd inefficiency. In despera tion, the company attempted to throw in some systems and structures, but that only further slowed down the lumbering tech startup.
“We
realised we had made a big mistake around managing our people,“ says Tewari.
Corrective measures duly followed. For the past three
years, InMobi has experiment ed with some very refreshing, counter-intuitive and even bizarre people policies to recruit, retain, engage and reward its employees. Just like Google and
Facebook,
which InMobi wants to go head-tohead with.
To do that, their talent management has to be as disruptive and far-reaching -and perhaps even more than the tech giants it is keen to emulate.
No
Attendance Issues
Facebook
is known not to track employee absences;
John Sullivan, a professor of management and consultant at San Francisco State University, in a recent presentation titled `People Management Practic es from Google, Facebook and
Apple',
said the key lesson to learn from that is “if you focus on
measure and reward performance, you won't have attend ance issues“.
InMobi
isn't there yet, but it has got its own variant of this Facebook policy:
employees
don't need their supervisor's approval for up to six days of leave.
And
there's more -everybody gets a 100% bonus (except the sales
team, which could get more or less depending on performance), and performance appraisal systems have gone out the window. There is no international travel expense policy;
InMobi employees travel and spend as they
please.
If a new InMobi recruit quits within a month, he gets a quitting bonus -three months' salary to go! Everybody atInMobi gets $800 annually as a `learning wallet' which they can utilise to do anything -cooking classes, scuba-diving lessons, learning a new language orsimply mastering new technologies. Also, everybody gets $200 every year to
change
their handsets.
When
any InMobians -as the staff is called -want to quit and start
a new venture,the company does everything they possibly can to support them. So instead oftaking their access card away when they quit, InMobi is happy offering them free office space, allowing them to intermingle, brainstorm with their ex-colleaguesand even eat the free food that a well equipped cafeteria serves round the clock.
“We
have made some radical, disruptive changes around people management.
And the results are visible,“ says Tewari. Earlier this month, InMobi made a big announcement in Silicon Valley with the rollout of a discovery feature called Miip on its platform. Miip, the company claims, is a “revolutionary discoveryplatform“ that delivers “a consistent, personalised and content-rich experience that users will fall in love with“ by presenting a curated collection of product feeds,apps and content with “stunning“ visuals. “It is so advanced and cutting edge that it is ahead of its time. And all that work was done in In dia,“ beams Tewari.
InMobi
is targeting a revenue of $1 billion by 2017 through Miip
alone. It is also partnering with handset makers like Samsung to target 650 million smartphone users by em bedding technology in the hardware so that ads are displayed while users are on their home screens.
Tewari
gets a pat on his back from Nandan Nilekani, cofounder of
Infosys who is an advisor to the InMobi board.
“InMobi
is truly an Indian company that has achieved global status
and we all should be proud of it. They were `mobiles only' and `mobile first' long before the terms were invented. They are one of the few companies in the world that have fe over a billion users. As they transition o from a B2B [business-to-business] company to a consumer brand, and from advertising to commerce on the smartphone, they will continue to break new ground.“
People:
Biggest Disruptive Force
The
rules have changed. In the 21st century knowledge-led world,
it is possible for an 11-year-old Facebook to overtake 220-year-old GE in market capitalisation.
The
three most valuable companies in the world today are Apple,
Microsoft nd Google -technology-led giants that are relative newbies on the corporate landscape. And if there is one weapon these giants are using effectively and efficiently to give them the competitive edge, it is their smart talent base.
“We
are going to be a massive global internet company,“ says Tewari. Harbouring sky-high
ambitions, Tewari knows where to look for cues.
Pitted
against giants like Facebook and Google, in an industry that is changing and
growing at frenetic pace, the relatively small
home-grown Indian company media reports put its valuation at around $2.5-3 billion; still insignificant ompared to Facebook's $270 billion and Google's $440 billion) is making some smart innovations around people policies to get ahead in the game.
“We
are in the business of innovation. People -and not products and
profits
-are our biggest asset,“ says Abhay Singhal, cofounder of
InMobi in charge of the people function.
There
are many reasons why InMobi thinks that way. It is the only
way it can flourish -or even survive. Operating across over 20 countries, pitted against giants, it knows well that it cannot win the game operationally. It has to be on the back of disruptive technology. “We have to create disruption in technology and
innovate
not once or twice but constantly and consistently.
everyday. It demands disruptive people policies to achieve that,“ says Tewari.
Born
in 2007 and focused on mobile as the platform, InMobi operated
in a niche space when it started. As smartphones and handheld devices get ubiquitous, the head start is proving useful. According to a March 2015 eMarketer report mobile ad spend is expected to grow from $19.2 billion (16% of digital ad spend
and
3.7% of total media ad spend) in 2013 to $101.4 billion by 2016
(51% of digital ad spend and 16.5% of to tal media ad spend).
While
Google is king in capturing both digital ad spend (31.45% in 2014) and mobile
ad spend (50.2% in 2014), it is increasingly seeing tough competition in the
mobile space. Facebook is playing catch-up rapidly,
with mobile ads count ing for almost $3 billion of its 2015 sec ond quarter revenues of $4 billon, an all-time high.That's because Facebook users are spending more and more time on their smartphones. Facebook's mobile ad spend surged from 5.4% in 2012 to 22.3% in 2014, according to eMarketer.
To
be sure, in the past two years, there has been significant consolidation
in the adtech industry. In 2013, Twitter acquired MoPub, a startup that helps mobile ublishers manage their ad inventory, for $350 million. A year later, Facebook acquired LiveRail, a video ad startup, for $500 million, Yahoo acquired BrightRoll, another video ad firm, for $640 million and Google ac quired Adometry, a marketing attribution company, for an undisclosed amount.
Unsurprisingly,
in March this year, the grapevine crackled that Google would acquire InMobi at a valuation upwards of $2
billion. InMobi dismissed the rumour,
and now seems keen to instead go head-on
with the global giants.
And
its people are visibly the centrepiece of its innovation gambit. “We have to
create a people culture that is not just about incremental improvement but10x
[10 times earnings multiple ] and truly disruptive,“ says Tewari.
That of course isn't easy. “The features and analytics on the InMobi ad platform are not as rich and robust as some of its competitors like Facebook and Google,“ says Jayanth Kolla, partner, Convergence Catalyst, a tech research & advisory firm.
YaWiO Culture
InMobi
says it is now fashioning its own people culture that's curiously called
YaWiO
-imagination (haYa in Turkish), Oneness (aWirodhin in Sanskrit) and
Action
(Opus in Latin). “All people initiatives that we undertake at InMobi are
a
reflection of the YaWiO culture that we live,“ says Anson Ben, director,
learning
& development, InMobi. Their cultural fest is called YaWiO-x; the
first
one was held early this year. The festival, like the name, is off-the-wall
For
a reason. “Often it happens that you go really deep into a prob lem, and
then
take a break. Giving your mind that rest is a critical step in the idea
generation
process. Think Archimedes -his Eureka moment was in a bathtub.
The
incubator was created when an obstetrician visited a zoo.
Throughout
history, we find stories like these,“ explains Ben.
The
three-day YaWiO-x invited three not-for-profits institutions XPRIZE
(focused
on technology) and Magic Bus (focused on education), and aerospace
Startup
Team Indus -to solve some of the big problems. XPRIZE, with impressive
advisory
board members like Elon Musk, James Cameron and Ratan Tata, threw
a
challenge to help solve women's safety issues using technology. Magic Bus,
which
works with 4,00,000 children in slums and villages, threw a challenge
to
transmit educational content through extremely low bandwidth. And Team
Indus,
which is looking to land an unmanned rover on the moon, wanted help
in
setting up a communication system between the rover and the lander amidst
harsh
conditions on the moon.
“At
InMobi, we have some of the best problem solvers.While taking a break,
if
they could help solve some of humanity's biggest challenges, nothing like
it,“
says
Ben. InMobians in 20 teams came together to find solutions to the problems.
“It
is an interesting initiative. At a humanistic level, all of us want to get
involved
with
something bigger than the self. We are on our way to solving the problem,“
says
Matthew Spacie, founder, Magic Bus.
The
only way Indian companies can move to the next level, becoming global
players
with world-class products in this knowledge-led world, is by finding new
ways
to hire and manage smart talent. They need to do what Silicon Valley
companies
like Google and Facebook have managed to do around talent
management which has helped them disrupt
markets and bring about innovations
“They
need to have their own version of YaWiO,to unleash their talent,“
says
Tewari.There are two broad themes that are shaping InMobi's people
policies
and its YaWiO culture. The first is the realisation that the world has
changed. “About 25 years ago, GE set the
benchmarks and the GE Way was
the
Bible for the corporate world in managing its people. That is no longer
true,“
says
Tewari. The complex performance management system that these companies
set
up was geared to test how people behaved in predictable circumstances.
In
traditional industries, where the job was repetitive, the thrust on process
excellence
worked.
The
world today is far more unpredictable with many disruptive forces at work.
How
to remain nimble and flexible despite scaling up is a constant worry.
Companies
today need people with very different skills to survive and flourish.
“They
should be comfortable taking risks and think of disruptive ideas.
should
work to remove the fear of failure,“ says Tewari.;
New
Rules for 21st Century
With
100% bonus policy for everyone (except sales team), the focus clearly is
to
push employ ees to give their best -not for a short-term fi nancial
incentive, but
to
create some thing truly disruptive. Similarly, con ventional HR policies
pertaining
to travel and leave were dustbinned as often they are drafted keeping
in
mind that violations happen in 1% of the cas es. For example, the company
had
a 10-page elaborate foreign travel policy document listing out expense limits
in
each country. One day they decided to get rid of the policy and asked people
to
travel and spend as if they were spending their own money.
The
fear of massive overspending was belied with only two out of a
thousand-odd
em ployees doing so. Even that 0.2% quick ly fell in line.
Similarly,
the HR team analysed past leave approval data, which revealed
that
90% of leave requests were for under six days and almost 99% of them
got
approved by the supervisor. So the company decided that for leave requests
for
up to six days, no supervisor approval is required.“We took away that
power
from the managers. Nobody misses it anymore,“ says Kevin Freitas,
director,
human resources, InMobi.
InMobi
aspires to give lot of learning and growth opportunities. One such is
called
a bridge assignment where employees can volunteer to take up
short-term
(threemonth) projects alongside their day job. So a finance
professional
can take up a bridge assignment in marketing.
This
helps the company break down the silo culture.
As
InMobi experiments with these employee policies, it is clear that some
policies
will work and some will not.“We will revisit them if we find they
are
not working,“ says Singhal almost casually. As they go about attempting
to
become as big as the Facebooks of the world, the InMobi cofounders are
also,
either consciously or otherwise, going by the lessons of their iconic
founders.
After all, it was Mark Zuckerberg who said: “You're better off
trying
something and having it not work and learning from that than not
doing
anything at all.
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ETM2AUG15
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