Naveen Jain: Going the Distance
Before India almost single-handedly ruled the 2009 Oscar Awards with Slumdog Millionaire, the country has partially conquered the U.S. with its brilliant corporate leaders. A quarter of America’s top startup companies are being led by immigrant CEOs, a handful of which are of Indian ancestry.
Intelius CEO Naveen Jain has proven himself a shrewd and hardworking India-born entrepreneur who has gone the distance and created a successful career in America. Like many other Indian CEOs in the IT community, Naveen Jain is an alumnus of the Indian Institute Technology, a state-sponsored engineering school that has produced a bulk of technical talent for Microsoft. He graduated with a B.S. in engineering before proceeding with graduate training in XLRI Jamshedpur where he earned a master’s in Personnel Management and Industrial Relations.
Naveen Jain moved to the U.S. through a business exchange program and began his career at Burroughs Corporation in New Jersey. Shortly thereafter, Microsoft hired him. Over the years, Jain proved brilliant enough to oversee some of the software giant’s important projects like Windows NT, Windows 95 and The Microsoft Network. He later severed ties with Microsoft when he decided to launch his own company in 1996, a feat that would soon earn him the moniker “Baby Bill,” because of the immense success of his brainchild InfoSpace. InfoSpace later allied with major Web players like AOL, MSN, Lycos and CNET and was able to take advantage of the dot com rush, peaking at $31 million in 2000.
He left the company in 2002 to form another successful information company in 2003, Intelius, a firm that would deliver intelligence services online. Steered by Naveen Jain’s dynamic and innovative leadership, the firm has had major accomplishments within six years. It has been distinguished in the American Business Awards and ranked 8th in Deloitte and Touche’s Fast 50.
