Naveen Tewari

Act I: The Catalyst

Naveen Tewari was raised in an academic family in Kanpur, with his father a professor at IIT Kanpur. Naveen earned his degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Kanpur in 2000 and his MBA from Harvard Business School, where he received the Dean's Award. After stints at McKinsey & Company and venture capital firm Charles River Ventures, Naveen felt an irresistible urge to build something transformative in India. In 2007, operating from a shared apartment in Mumbai with co-founders Amit Gupta, Abhay Singhal, and Mohit Saxena, he launched mKhoj, a SMS-based search and local commerce engine.

Act II: The Genesis Bet

mKhoj quickly ran out of cash as SMS-based search proved economically unsustainable. Facing total failure, Naveen made a daring pivot: noticing the global rise of smartphones, they transformed mKhoj into InMobi, an open mobile advertising network. Betting that mobile advertising would outgrow desktop search, the founders maxed out their personal credit cards to build an international mobile ad exchange that could serve real-time rich media ads across feature phones and smartphones worldwide.

Act III: Zero-to-One PMF

InMobi's technology caught the attention of global venture investors. In 2008, Kleiner Perkins and Sherpalo Ventures invested early capital. Naveen led aggressive international expansion into Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the United States, positioning InMobi as the only viable independent global alternative to Google and Apple's mobile ad networks. In 2011, SoftBank invested a historic $200 million into InMobi, officially crowning InMobi as India's very first tech unicorn.

Act IV: The Flywheel of Scale

Naveen navigated fierce global platform competition by constantly reinventing InMobi's technological edge. InMobi acquired international adtech companies, pioneered native video advertising on mobile, and developed advanced programmatic advertising exchanges. In 2019, Naveen unveiled his most ambitious consumer venture: Glance, an AI-powered smart lock screen platform that serves live content, interactive games, and news directly onto smartphone lock screens without requiring app downloads.

Act V: Crucible of Fire & Inflection Points

Glance became a viral phenomenon across India and Southeast Asia, reaching over 230 million active users. In December 2020, Google and Mithril Capital invested $145 million into Glance at a valuation exceeding $1 billion, turning Glance into an independent unicorn subsidiary within the InMobi Group. Naveen accomplished the extraordinary feat of building two distinct unicorns under one corporate roof.

Act VI: Ecosystem Architecture

Naveen Tewari is universally recognized as the founding patriarch of the modern Indian startup ecosystem. The 'InMobi Mafia'—former InMobi executives who departed to launch their own ventures—has spawned over 50 prominent startups, including unicorn companies like Yulu, Hasura, and multiple leading B2B SaaS firms. Naveen is an active angel investor, philanthropist, and champion of India's sovereign technological capabilities.

Act VII: The Long Horizon

Naveen is taking InMobi Group toward a historic domestic IPO while expanding Glance's smart lock screen surface across the United States, Latin America, and Japan. Naveen's long horizon is centered on transforming every connected device screen on earth into an intelligent, AI-curated discovery portal, proving that Indian-born consumer technology can define the global standard.