Bangalore: Mobile advertising firm InMobi plans to increase its hiring overseas, and reward top performers with incentives such as Harley Davidson motorcycles, De Beers jewellery and Volkswagen cars as it races to achieve its target of $1 billion in revenue by 2016.
The company will hire more in China and the US and could cross the 1,000-employee milestone by the end of 2014, said Monisha Tambay, head of HR at InMobi.
The incentive scheme launched by InMobi earlier this year is unusual among upcoming firms and start-ups in India.
It is designed in a way to “attract the right kind of talent and thank them in advance for being a part of the ambitious and difficult target InMobi has set for itself,” Tambay said.
“Right now we’re at an inflexion point as a company. Once you’ve got the best people for your organization, the effort is obviously around how to retain them,” she said. “These incentives are more of a token of gratitude to the people who have been with InMobi in their journey so far and also a demonstration of the confidence in our team.”
There is a catch. Employees who opt for these incentives need to be with the company for at least three years. If they leave the company before that, they are not eligible for those incentives. The incentive policy applies to all existing employees as well as all new employees who have joined the company this year.
The company will also hire 30-40 people each in North America, Europe and China.
“We’re going much deeper into existing countries and accounts. As we increase our count of number of clients, number of countries we operate in, we need more people,” said Tambay. “There is a huge growth focus in all of these geographies.”
InMobi has also just launched its native ad platform and is betting big on the business in which it will invest $100 million over the next few years. Native mobile advertising refers to the concept of creating ads that are content- and utility-rich and can reach out to larger audiences.
InMobi, which recently launched a video ad platform, generates about $500-600 million annually, company executives who requested anonymity said. InMobi does not disclose financial numbers.
“Brands like Harley are premium brands and there’s a feel-good factor attached to such things,” said Anshuman Das, co-founder at recruiting firm CareerNet. “Employees feel privileged to own them especially as they otherwise wouldn’t have bought them. But ultimately most employees look for things like the work place culture, company’s performance and how well it is doing. Freebies are less important, in comparison.”
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