Softbank Corp. has invested $200 million in InMobi to help both companies create value across the mobile ecosystem.

The funding will take place in two tranches ? $100 million in September followed by an equivalent tranche in April. The investment will also help InMobi further expand on advertising, mobile payments and HTML5 media production.

?We?ve grown and developed in the last few years,? said Naveen Tewari, founder/CEO of InMobi, San Francisco.  

?If you look between August 2008 and today ? in August we had about 1.5 million users and today we have roughly 340 million users across the world,? he said.

InMobi claims to be the world?s largest independent mobile ad network. With offices on four continents, it provides advertisers, publishers and developers with a global solution for advertising.

The company is venture-backed by investors such as Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures.

Mobile investment
The investment will provide Softbank and InMobi with opportunities to further explore global scale collaboration in the rapidly growing mobile ad market.

It is also expected to generate further synergies between InMobi and Softbank, especially given the significant number of prominent Asian Internet companies in Softbank?s investment portfolio, per Mr. Tewari.

?We believe that this business and space is certainly growing,? Mr. Tewari said. ?We believe that this market it is not a winner-take-all market, you?ll have a handful of players that will be relevant and we want to make sure we?re fairly strong and a significant player in this.

?We?ve had a significant impact in the U.S. Market and we believe we can take that and combine our strengths in Asia to have a fairly global dominance,? he said.

Impact
In the past few years, InMobi has been making an impact in the mobile space.

Last year, In Mobi secured $8 million in its Series B funding round to further its global expansion with an emphasis on North America, Europe and Japan. The company said that it would focus on its recent United States expansion, launch in Japan and continue to grow existing operations in Europe, Asia Pacific and Africa (see story).

InMobi also recently acquired Sprout, which offers an HTML5 platform to help agencies and brands create and distribute rich media mobile ads. For InMobi, the deal could help it build the use of rich media advertising and give advertisers a way to drive higher results from mobile (see story).

?This industry will eclipse any of the still form of advertising in the next few years and we?re certainly betting on this and we?re going to go big on this one,? Mr. Tewari said.

?This business is all about technology and providing customers new products,? he said. ?We?re going to invest in engineering and new talent.?

Final Take
Rimma Kats is staff reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York