Entrepreneurship is about failing many times, succeeding once

Naveen Tiwari, Founder of the InMobi Group joined Vineet Khurana of Chandigarh Angels Network for a Fireside Chat. Naveen started off by telling the audience about the time he launched InMobi as an advertising and marketing group. As a team, they realized that mobile phone use will increase exponentially over time and a strong advertising system was required to make content consumption free. 

Naveen said that they never started with the vision of building something big, but only aimed high. Entrepreneurship is hard in any case so one would rather aim for the stars than settle for less. He also stressed upon making bold decisions for the company. For him, it was trying to build a global product brand from India despite people suggesting otherwise and being innovation-oriented from the very start.

Naveen further discussed how he raised initial rounds of funding for InMobi despite the limited investment infrastructure. They sold their concept in a way that was easy to understand – that a few clicks can make money. Thus, they became the first startup to get angel investment in the country, raising $50,000. However, the next round of funding required a lot of perseverance considering no Indian investors were interested. He revealed interesting details of how he managed to get John Doerr, one of the world’s leading investors to fund InMobi to the tune of $7 Million. As of October 2019, InMobi has raised a total of $320 Million and is valued over $1 Billion.

The last segment of his chat focussed on his experiences as an investor. Naveen said he is not the one to back ideas per se because they are constantly evolving and changing. It is adaptability that sets an entrepreneur apart because no matter what is thrown at you, you need to improvise and power through. It is only the entrepreneur and his determination that is the deal maker or breaker for him. Naveen summed it up perfectly by saying, “Entrepreneurship is about failing many times and succeeding once.”