Naveen S Tewari

Naveen S. Tewari
Born1977 (age 48–49)
Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India
Education
OccupationEntrepreneur
Known forFounder and CEO of InMobi; founder of Glance

Naveen S. Tewari (born 1977) is an Indian entrepreneur. He is the founder and chief executive officer of InMobi, a mobile advertising and technology company, and the founder of Glance, a lock-screen content platform owned by InMobi.[1][2]

Under Tewari, InMobi became India's first venture-capital-backed unicorn in 2011, reaching a valuation of more than US$1 billion after an investment from the SoftBank Group.[3][4] His second venture, Glance, launched in 2019 and crossed a US$1 billion valuation in 2020.[5] In 2021, Forbes India named him Outstanding Startup Entrepreneur at its Leadership Awards.[6]

Early life and education

Tewari was born in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, and grew up on the campus of the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, where several of his relatives worked as academics; his family had hoped he would pursue a doctorate and an academic career.[1][7] He studied at IIT Kanpur, graduating with a Bachelor of Technology in 2000.[8] He then attended Harvard Business School, where he completed a Master of Business Administration in 2005 and received the Dean's Award.[8][9]

Career

Early career

Tewari joined McKinsey & Company as a business analyst in 2000, working on a market-entry strategy for an Indian conglomerate moving into the telecommunications sector, and remained there until 2003.[9][10] During and after his MBA he worked with the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Charles River Ventures, an experience he later described as the turning point that drew him to startups.[9][7]

InMobi

In 2007, Tewari co-founded mKhoj, an SMS-based search engine, in Mumbai, together with Mohit Saxena, Amit Gupta and Abhay Singhal; the business was incorporated in Singapore to widen its investor base.[11][4] After mKhoj failed to gain traction, Tewari and his co-founders refocused the company on mobile advertising and renamed it InMobi, reportedly financing the relaunch with credit-card debt and drawing investment from Kleiner Perkins and Sherpalo Ventures.[1][7]

Tewari expanded InMobi internationally soon after the relaunch, entering South Africa and Europe before North America, a sequence he attributed to weaker competition and faster mobile adoption in emerging markets.[7][12] In 2011, he secured a US$200 million investment from SoftBank, which made InMobi India's first venture-capital-backed unicorn.[3][4] By 2015, the BBC reported that InMobi was the third-largest company in mobile advertising, behind only Google and Facebook.[7]

In 2015, Tewari oversaw the launch of Miip, a discovery-based advertising product that did not gain adoption; he later said the product "bombed gloriously" and that the failure dented his confidence for several years.[2][13] In 2016, during his tenure as CEO, InMobi settled United States Federal Trade Commission charges that it had tracked the locations of hundreds of millions of users, including children, in a manner inconsistent with its stated privacy practices and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act; the settlement carried a civil penalty reduced to US$950,000.[14][15]

In 2021, Tewari explored a United States listing for InMobi at a valuation of up to US$15 billion, but the plan was halted amid a market downturn during the COVID-19 pandemic.[4][16] In 2024, he said InMobi would move its corporate base from Singapore to India in early 2025 and pursue an initial public offering in India later that year, adding that the company had been profitable for several years, with sales of about US$268 million in the financial year ended March 2023.[4]

Glance

Tewari launched Glance in 2019 as an India-based internet platform; InMobi remains its largest shareholder.[13][4] He raised US$145 million for Glance from Google and Mithril Capital in 2020, a round that valued it at more than US$1 billion,[5][17] and a further US$200 million from Jio Platforms in 2022 at a valuation of about US$1.7 billion.[18] By 2024, the company said Glance had more than 450 million users, though tech media outlets and users have criticised the pre-installed software as bloatware because of difficulties in disabling it.[13][19] By late 2025, Tewari had shifted Glance toward generative AI and "agentic" commerce, investing about US$200 million in an AI commerce agent; the company became the subject of a Harvard Business School case study.[20]

Views

In February 2025, at an event hosted by the investment platform LetsVenture, Tewari said InMobi expected to automate about 80 percent of its software coding by the end of that year and that its software engineers would not have their jobs within two years, urging technology professionals to reskill. The remarks were widely reported in the Indian business press.[21][22]

Board memberships and investments

Tewari joined the board of Paytm (One97 Communications) in 2015 and became an independent director of Narayana Health in 2023.[9] He is an angel investor in several startups, including Razorpay, and co-founded iSPIRT, a software-product think tank.[23]

Awards and recognition

  • Fortune India 40 Under 40 (2015)[24]
  • Outstanding Startup Entrepreneur, Forbes India Leadership Awards (2021)[6]

References

  1. 1 2 3 D'Monte, Leslie (2019-08-26). "Naveen S. Tewari: Riding the unicorn". Mint. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
  2. 1 2 Gupta, Sunil (2015-11-04). "In Mobile Advertising, Timing Is Everything". Harvard Business Review. ISSN 0017-8012. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
  3. 1 2 "Hot Hand In Mobile Advertising". Forbes. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "India's first unicorn sets sights on IPO after returning home". The Business Times. Bloomberg. 2024-07-19. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  5. 1 2 Leung, Shirley (2020-12-22). "Funding from Google helps Harvard alum score another unicorn, with an app that aims to dominate the lock screen". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
  6. 1 2 "FILA 2021 Outstanding Startup Entrepreneur: Naveen S. Tewari, the unicorn maker". Forbes India. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Pandya-Wagh, Kinjal (2015-10-20). "India's global ad giant taking on Google and Facebook". BBC News. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  8. 1 2 Shekhar, Divya (2016-08-23). "Team sports is the best for bonding, believes InMobi founder Naveen Tewari". The Economic Times. ISSN 0013-0389. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
  9. 1 2 3 4 "Naveen Tewari". IIT Kanpur. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  10. ↑ Rai, Saritha. "India's first-ever unicorn is planning for a 2021 U.S. IPO". Fortune. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
  11. ↑ "InMobi has positioned itself as the go-to company in mobile advertising". Forbes India. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
  12. ↑ "InMobi's Naveen Tewari: Mobile Internet Will Be the Largest Medium Ever". Knowledge at Wharton. 2011-06-13. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  13. 1 2 3 Singh, Rajiv (2024-12-12). "'Founder mode' or 'manager mode' for your startup? The devil may lie in the details". Forbes India. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  14. ↑ "Mobile Advertising Network InMobi Settles FTC Charges It Tracked Hundreds of Millions of Consumers' Locations Without Permission". Federal Trade Commission. 2016-06-22. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
  15. ↑ "InMobi to pay nearly $1 million following FTC charges of location tracking deception". MarTech. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
  16. ↑ "Indian Unicorn InMobi Plans US IPO at Value of Up to $15 Billion". Bloomberg. 2021-03-31. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  17. ↑ "Google, Thiel Funding Helps Harvard Alum Score a Second Unicorn". Bloomberg. 2020-12-22. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  18. ↑ "Jio invests $200 million in InMobi's Glance as it looks to expand its e-commerce footprint". MediaNama. 2022-02-16. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
  19. ↑ Rao, Rukmini (2025-07-13). "How Naveen Tewari built InMobi into India's first unicorn—and ignited a startup multiplier effect". Fortune India. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
  20. ↑ Gulati, Ranjay; Bhisikar, Rohit; Dey, Kairavi. "Glance: Reimagining Commerce with AI". Harvard Business School. Retrieved 2026-06-20.
  21. ↑ "'My software engineers will go away': InMobi CEO warns of AI driven job cuts". Business Today. 2025-02-28. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
  22. ↑ "Job losses looming at InMobi as CEO warns of automating 80% of software coding". Storyboard18. 2025-02-28. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
  23. ↑ "The man who uses instincts over numbers". Business Standard. Archived from the original on 2025-06-13. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
  24. ↑ "40 Under 40 2015: Year's Best Young Business Leaders". Fortune India. Retrieved 2026-06-15.
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