Naveen Jain: Building Leaders for the 21st Century
Intelius President and CEO Naveen Jain is the embodiment of the successful man in the era of globalization. Now in his 50s, Naveen Jain is the man behind two of the most successful Internet companies ever built. The first, being InfoSpace, an online content provider founded in 1996 during the dot com period and the most recent, Intelius, a top provider of online intelligence services such as background checks, screening, verification, and people searches.
Jain is a native of Uttar Pradesh, India who moved to the U.S. through a business exchange program. After making the thousand-mile journey to a foreign country, Jain, who is an engineer by profession, was ready to take on the 21st century IT market. He has a bachelor’s in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and an MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur. Jain wants to dispel the idea that just because one is born poor, one is doomed to die poor. Like him, opportunities are available to succeed, but there are requirements. A college education is no longer a luxury in the globalized world; it is a necessity.
Naveen Jain’s philanthropy focuses on granting opportunities to financially challenged but highly qualified students to pursue studies in engineering and business. Together with his wife Anu, Jain initiated a scholarship endowment worth $170,000 for the benefit of undergraduate students taking up Engineering, Science, and Business courses at the University of Washington. In addition to the endowment, Naveen Jain’s entrepreneurial advocacy includes mentorship for The Kairos Society, an organization of college students from Ivy League schools who are dedicated to a future in business. As mentor to Kairos, Jain believes that the future CEOs of the nation must be ready to take on the challenges of the 21st century by continuing to innovate.
