Who Is Naveen Jain?
Stories have been spun about Intelius chief Naveen Jain, former InfoSpace founder and ex-Forbes’ 400 Richest American. With all the inescapable intrigue and controversy in the world of the wealthy and powerful, an objective look at this charismatic man and his meteoric rise needs to be undertaken.
Naveen Jain is an India-born engineer who made his fame and fortune in America. He shares this description along with a substantial number of CEOs in the U.S. today who are of foreign ancestry. Born in 1959 in Uttar Pradesh, India, Naveen Jain graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology. He came to America in the 1980s and gained his first employment with New Jersey company Burroughs Corporation. Shortly after that, Microsoft hired him as group manager. For seven years, Naveen Jain worked for the world’s richest man, Bill Gates, whom he considers a personal role model.
Microsoft became a stepping stone for a greater career move for the young Jain. In 1996, he decided to resign from Microsoft to start an ambitious startup project: an online content provider he would call InfoSpace. InfoSpace became immensely successful, and at this time, Naveen Jain’s description changed remarkably to being a faceless engineer to the person referred as “baby Bill” or “smarter than Bill Gates.” In 2000, Jain took InfoSpace to its highest value at $31 billion. During the same year, his personal worth netted $2.2 billion.
With his dynamic leadership and drive for innovation, one thing seems certain: there is no stopping Naveen Jain from doing what he does best – succeeding. The entrepreneur’s decision to leave InfoSpace became another stepping stone to set up a new company called Intelius, Inc. in 2003. The information commerce firm that supplies background checks, people search, and other intelligence services has seen a six-year growth of 1566.27% for the 2003-2007 timespan. Considered one of the fastest growing tech companies in North America, its customer base now stands at over 10 million.
