Naveen Tewari thrives on pivots and preempting market demand before it becomes obvious to everyone else.
In this deep-dive with the founder and CEO of InMobi and Glance, host Anirban Chowdhury traces India’s earliest unicorn from its 2007 pivot from mKhoj (SMS search) to mobile advertising, SoftBank’s $200 million backing, and a “born-global” scale-up: InMobi today derives 65%–70% of revenue from North America. We also unpack the second act: Glance, the AI-led lock-screen platform with 400 million users, and its newest bet—AI commerce: a business built on a foundation model trained for shopping, with monetization via transaction take-rates and brand enablement.
Tewari argues that his businesses’ US concentration is a feature, not a bug. He outlines why post-cookie privacy guardrails have largely stabilized, and explains why advertising keeps the internet free. He also predicts 80% automation of software coding at InMobi and what that means for talent, velocity, and quality—plus where an eventual IPO fits when you’re already profitable and well-funded.
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