Ad firm secures one of the largest ever investments in the mobile content space.
The funding will take place in two phases - $100m in September 2011, and another $100m in April 2012.
It is clearly designed to increase InMobi's footprint in Asia Pac. InMobi and Softbank say they expect the partnership to generate further synergies between them, given the number of prominent Asian Internet companies in SoftBank’s investment portfolio.
Funds will also enable more strategic acquisitions, such as its recent purchase of Sprout, and the development of more internal R&D to expand InMobi's SmartPay mobile payments platform.
The investment marks a huge vote of confidence in InMobi, which just two years ago was a largely Indian-focused network called mKhoj.
A re-brand to InMobi and a rapid expansion programme across EMEA and the US has put the firm in the top division of mobile ad networks, with AdMob, Buzz City, Millennial and a few others.
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It started 2010 with 7.5 billion monthly page impressions, but now has 47.3 billion a month.
Naveen Tewari, CEO of InMobi, said: “The size of the investment and quality of investor validate the enormous potential in mobile today and strengthen our role in helping the industry evolve.
"We have already established ourselves as a leader in mobile advertising on every continent. This is just the beginning. With a global leader like SoftBank behind us, we are now well positioned to fully capitalise on the opportunity before us.”
InMobi is also backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures.
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