40 Under 40 2021: Vasuta Agarwal, InMobi

Vasuta Agarwal

SVP and managing director, Asia Pacific
InMobi
India

As the managing director and SVP of InMobi’s Asia Pacific business, Vasuta Agarwal has come a long way from her first job working as a chip-design engineer for Intel in 2005. Thereafter, Agarwal did a three year stint at McKinsey in strategy consultingbefore joining InMobi in 2012, where she has since worn many hats, taking on strategy, product, management and business roles.

In the last nine years, Agarwal has made a significant business impact at InMobi, from setting up a new business vertical that grew fivefold in the span of a year, to her current role. Today she manages the profit and loss, revenue, and client partnerships for Southeast Asia, India, Japan, Korea and Australia for the InMobi B2B arm, and leads a 175-person diverse team across 10 markets.

While 2020 was a challenging year for advertising, Agarwal took the bull by the horns and focussed on ensuring a smooth transition for her teams, clients, and partners as they navigated a new reality. By identifying new growth opportunities such as gaming, online retail, OTT, educational technology, and health and fitness—as well as orchestrating long-term strategic deals including GroupM and The Trade Desk at an APAC level, Gojek in Southeast Asia—Agarwal has created sustainable and long-term business value, resulting in consistent and high growth in the last year in APAC. More broadly, over the past three to four years, Agarwal has ensured that InMobi completely pivoted from the network model and has emerged as the second largest independent programmatic exchange in APAC. Her team has grown from just 25 people to more than 170 people across 10 markets, and the business has grown more than tenfold in a span of merely four years.

Agarwal leads from the front with sincerity and discipline. Under her leadership, the business teams at InMobi have achieved several milestones including the first multimillion-dollar client win and the first multi-year agency deal. She has also mentored several individuals within and outside her team at InMobi, both professionally and personally. Meanwhile, at InMobi, Agarwal has been a central figure in shaping the diversity and inclusion values. She pioneered #SheIsBack—an initiative to help women who have been on a career break to get back into the workforce. She also launched ‘Winspire’—a platform for creating a community and mentoring young women.