Naveen Jain: a Career Narrative
Seattle businessman and philanthropist Naveen Jain is one of the most admired leaders in information commerce today. Revered and respected for his brilliance, dynamic personality, and innovative streak, the Intelius CEO and President is doubly admired for the struggle he went through and the obstacles he had hurdled to become the man he is.
Naveen Jain was born in 1959 in the province of Uttar Pradesh, India. Raised with few comforts and conveniences, Naveen Jain obtained a bachelor’s in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, one of the most prestigious universities in the nation. Afterwards, he acquired an M.B.A. from the XLRI Jamshedpur.
When chance came through a business exchange program, Naveen Jain migrated to the U.S. He worked at New Jersey’s Burroughs Corporation for a year in 1985 before moving to Washington after Microsoft Corp. hired him as a group manager in June 1989. Naveen Jain soon earned a managerial position where he became instrumental in leading marketing efforts for the Microsoft Network. In March 1996, he resigned from Microsoft and launched a startup company he called InfoSpace. InfoSpace provided online content from telephone and addresses to horoscopes and stock quotes for huge Web properties such as AOL, MSN, and Lycos. With Naveen Jain alluded as “smarter than Bill Gates” and InfoSpace as the next Microsoft, the latter grew increasingly profitable and became one of the most valuable dot com businesses, emerging as a $31 billion company in the heyday of the dot com boom.
In early 2003, Naveen Jain formed another infocommerce company called Intelius, this time providing predictive intelligence to empower individuals and businesses in making more intelligence choices. The firm supplies a wide array of services such as comprehensive background checks, criminal checks, identity theft protection, people searches, and employment screening. It is one of the fastest growing tech companies in North America, as adjudged by Deloitte & Touche.
