Tell us about your current role at InMobi
Right now, I run 1Weather, a leading weather app on Google Play with over 100M downloads. Every month, over 15 million trust 1Weather to plan their day and keep them safe. The 1Weather growth story has been phenomenal, and we continue to add about 3M new users every single month, thanks to our OEM and Telco partners.
The 1Weather journey started back in 2019, a very modest app primarily part of the Sprint telco portfolio of devices, to now being the defacto weather destination for users across multiple telco networks and several OEM partners. For someone who came into this role from a partnerships and monetization background, running a wider set of functions including product and engineering has been a learning experience.
Walk us through your journey at InMobi
I really cannot believe it has been 11 years already! Every day is so new that you lose track of time. I joined in October 2012, to do what was then referred to as Online Sales Operations. Simply put, we had 2 ways of acquiring customers. The traditional and the high-touch route (Direct Sales), where we had teams based out of San Francisco, New York, London, Seoul, Tokyo, Singapore, Beijing, and a few more, reaching out to potential partners and managing existing partnerships. Online sales focused on doing it all remotely, doing it at scale with a team based out of Bangalore. The unit was new not just to me and my team, but also to the company. Sitting out of Bangalore, we cold-called game developers and app publishers across the globe, and we as a team were successful in setting up a seamless online sales channel. A team of five that started this gig, we even won a CEO award at the time.
I then transitioned to running publisher partnerships as a function, initially heading teams for accounts in Europe and North America. Fast forward a couple of years, and my team ran partnerships globally except for publishers from China, Japan, and Korea. The growth from 2012 to 2015 was phenomenal – we started modestly and moved on to working with some of the biggest and badest names in the mobile publishing industry. Travel became the new norm and I got to visit some of the fanciest places in the world. I even visited Oulu, a city very close to the North Pole, to meet one of our biggest gaming partners and he remains a good friend to date. At some point in this role, we decided that we needed a hybrid model instead of a fully Bangalore-based partner management setup. I relocated to our San Francisco office and set up a team here from scratch. This was a whole different experience, hiring top local talent while continuing to run a large team at our headquarters.
As I mentioned, there is never a dull day around here. When things look all settled in, we like to bring in some chaos. We were acquiring Pinsight media from the erstwhile US telco Sprint. They had a portfolio of apps that included 1Weather and I expressed interest in running this engine. In all honesty, it was a zero-to-one role. At InMobi, we help publishers monetize via ads but this was a first for all of us. It always helps when the CEO tells you, “It's okay if it does not work out, we’ll find you something nicer”.
To sum it all up, I think the journey so far has been amazing and extremely rewarding. I have in every sense built my career at InMobi and I am very proud of that.
What has made you stay with the organization?
At InMobi, I have been associated with a lot of zero-to-one business and that has resulted in me being much more invested and attached, each project has been like my own baby. Of course, there are pros and cons to that, you tend to get more emotionally attached than intended but I’ve been empowered to think big and have an entrepreneurial mindset throughout. This stands out and I realize its importance in my conversations with industry friends. More often than not, they have a very objective view of their jobs which is just transactional and about getting the job done. This has never been the case for me here. A lot of trust has come my way from the founders and leaders I have worked with. You will see that the organization believes in giving opportunities to individuals who have shown enough grit and can transcend ambiguity, to tackle some of the hardest problems, and give them room to fail, learn, and grow. That is how I have been groomed as a leader, and as I built my team, this is what I focus on.
Your proudest accomplishment at InMobi so far?
Between 2013 and 2015, I had the honor of working with some of the largest gaming publishers in Europe. They were all very successful game developers, with over a few billion downloads on the store, but at heart, all of them were grounded individuals, who spoke about everything from daily chores to summer vacations. I love working with our partners, connecting with them beyond work, and getting to know them as people, their interests, their hobbies, and for a few, even their outlook on life. This personal theory on investing in people comes from our leadership. To me, personally, this is how I go about working with people. Be that a colleague, a team member, or a big business partner. Everybody has a story, and those stories make them unique, one-of-a-kind, and amazing to work with. InMobi allows you to do things differently, and textbooks hold very little place.
A bit about your life outside work
Vaidehi, my beautiful life partner, and I live in the San Francisco Bay area with our three-year-old, Sriram. Vaidehi teaches meditation, and we met at a meditation workshop by the Art of Living Foundation a long time ago. We are both drawn to spirituality and believe there is much more to life.
When we are not finding a park or a lesson to take our toddler to, I am either trying to find the best sambar and dosa in the bay or exploring a new national park (our all-time favorite is Zion). Even after 7 years in the US, we still miss India and we like spending time in India with our parents, exploring temples, and doing silence meditation workshops.
To work with leaders like Srikanth and build a career with us, explore opportunities on our careers page.
Register to our blog updates newsletter to receive the latest content in your inbox.
.png)
