AdMob ropes in Mahesh Narayanan as India manager

Televisionpoint.com Correspondent | Mumbai
AdMob, an US-based mobile advertising network, has appointed Mahesh Narayanan as country manager for its Indian operations. He moves from Google India, where he was senior industry manager.

AdMob places ads on websites and applications accessed through mobile phones. It serves about 6.2 billion mobile banner and text ads per month globally. The has already raised more than $ 45 million of funding from venture capital firms like Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson's Growth Fund and Northgate Capital.

Narayanan says, "I will play an important role in the company's growth in the rapidly expanding mobile advertising industry in India. India is an important market for us and we are looking at growing our business presence and relationships in the region."

Narayanan has about nine years of experience across internet and media companies. In 2000, he was among the founding members of the auction portal, BidorbuyIndia.com.

In November 2001, he moved to Bazee.com for a brief period of three months, before joining advertising agency, Mediaturf Worldwide, in February 2002 as senior manager. Here, Narayanan handled clients such as ICICI Bank, Citibank, Cadburys, P&G, Thomas Cook and eBay.

In 2005, he moved to Times Now, the news channel owned by Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited. He was responsible for setting up the internet and mobile presence of the channel.

Thereafter, he joined Google India, where he was responsible for the brand team that devised the monetisation strategy for Orkut.com and YouTube.com. He also looked after the sales team of Google AdWords program. Narayanan was the member of the team, which started direct ad sales at Google India in 2005.