Animesh Sarker
Elon Musk, a Canadian-American business investor, inventor and engineer once said “If something is important enough, you should try, even if the probable outcome is failure.” Similarly, Naveen Tewari, the CEO and founder of a global mobile advertising and technology platform known as InMobi, has built himself up from failures. Like many startup founders, Naveen faced financial ruin and rejection from people. However, Naveen strived to get to the top and successfully launched InMobi, which has a value of $2 million.
Naveen was born in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. His family comprises his parents who were IIT Professors, and his grandmother was the first female IIT Professor. However, Tewari never spoke about his childhood as being extraordinary or something to cherish. After college, he got a competitive job at McKinsey & Co. He would have gone to grad school had it not been for McKinsey & Co. who decided to recruit from IIT for the first time that year. At first, Naveen’s first meetings were unsuccessful, with no continuation of it. With no money in hand to go to USA, he flew to San Francisco from Mumbai through high-end travel agent and stayed with his friend. Despite hoping to get a “yes” after a long time, the answer came as “no” from a top investor Ram Shriram.
Before InMobi came to burgeon in the market, Tewari had started his first business named mKhoj, which soon proved to be unsuccessful. However, InMobi was the first business to have pivoted to new heights. According to Anindya Ghose, professor of NYU Stern Business School, InMobi is one of the four renowned companies that is running the globe of mobile advertising, besides Facebook, Google and Apple. The co-founder, Mohit Saxena used to have a good job at Virgin mobile until one day when he came across Tewari and began to talk about starting a company. InMobi is a company that helps those who want to sell ads reach people using the internet who might have something to buy online. Top Silicon Valley investors such as Sherpalo Ventures and Kleiner, Byers, Caufield and Kleiner have supported this act. In the developing world, people use internet more on mobile than on laptops. According to Mobile Association of India, about 75% of around 400 million online users will use their mobile phones and not computer. Therefore, the company launched a new product in the previous summer called Miip which is an avatar of a monkey that will randomly chat with the user in any app and suggest things to buy online.
InMobi has grown to become one of the companies that Google might buy. This became possible because of Naveen’s big dreams, and this has helped InMobi to burgeon to its current state. But according to Ghose, InMobi is still short of being in true competition. Ghose also added that InMobi would have to master the data game and get access to data about user preference. Therefore, InMobi and Naveen have yet to go far together to wear the crown.