Glance will go into US, Latin America: Founder

Bengaluru: A day after Reliance Jio Platforms bought into InMobi’s lock screen unicorn Glance, the latter's founder Naveen Tewari said the $200 million funding would be deployed to accelerate global ambitions, especially in the US and Latin America.
“First capital deployment is in globalisation of Glance. The first capital raise got us India, the second one got us Asia, and this one should get us Latin America and the US,” he told TOI.
Piyush Shah, co-founder of InMobi Group and president and COO of Glance, said, “Inmobi is building in India for the world.We liken our ambition to how Tencent came out of China and launched multiple consumer platforms on the back of a super platform,” he said.
Glance, which provides dynamic content on the lock screens of Android phones, has raised $390 million to date.
The latest funding values Glance at around $2 billion, sources told TOI. Glance’s lock screen platform is present on more than 400 million devices across markets in Asia.
Asked about monetisation efforts and margins, Tewari said a live commerce platform like Glance involves select SKUs and high volumes.
“E-commerce or physical commerce has many SKUs. With a limited number of SKUs, you have the potential of higher margins. You do have the incremental cost of a creator or influencer. Over the mid to long term, if we go by unit economics in China, the business has solid margins,” he said.
Tewari said they are on a journey to integrate deeper with Reliance Retail at the intersection of physical, digital and live commerce.
“They have the ability to hold inventory at a much lower price point than us. But our ability to do live commerce is significantly stronger. We will have better price points as we integrate deeper with Reliance Retail,” he said.