Entrepreneur Story of Naveen Tewari – InMobi

Story of InMobi

Born on the 14^th of December, 1977, in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, Naveen Tewari is a renowned Indian entrepreneur who is the founder and CEO of InMobi, which is a popular global mobile technology and advertising company.

He is also a board member of Paytm. He was born to Dr. Sachinand Tewari, who was a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

From the very same institute, Naveen completed his Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering in the year 2000 and it was where he met Abhay Singhal and Amit Gupta, two of his friends who later went to be the co-founders of InMobi along with another person that was Mohit Saxena.

Back in the year 2007, when Naveen along with his friends were embarking on their entrepreneurial journey in Mumbai, staying at a shared apartment, they were known as the ‘’Boys with PowerPoint.’’

Their first venture together was an SMS search engine called mKhoj, which failed as soon as it was launched, but they metamorphosed their business into mobile technology and advertising that led to the birth of InMobi and following that, they shifted their base from Mumbai to Bangalore, where Naveen currently stays. Few of the key investors in InMobi are SoftBank, KPCB, and Sherpalo.

Naveen’s professional journey after his Bachelor’s degree began right from the year 2000 when he started working with McKinsey and Company and remained associated with them till the year 2003.

In the year 2004, he worked as an associate at Charles River Ventures, and it was the following year in 2005 that he went to Harvard Business School to pursue his Master’s in Business Administration (MBA). There he was felicitated with the Dean’s Award for his academic performance displaying excellent leadership skills and contribution.

During his course at the HBS, he founded and still continues to chair a U.S. based nonprofit, which is known as the Indian Schoolhouse Fund. It helps in setting up schools in rural India with the help of funds.

Recently in the year 2015, in collaboration with IDG Ventures, Naveen invested a sum of $1.2 million in an Indian start-up called Nestaway, which is currently known as India’s largest home rental network, spread over multiple major cities in the country, like Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Gurgaon, among others.