A sea of blue jerseys and faces painted in Indian tricolour. Families and neighbours in a cramped living room, glued to grainy TV screens, their hearts in their mouths at every ball bowled. Pedestrians huddled together on footpaths outside stalls and shops, watching the match. Cricket is a religion in this country. But what if it’s more than a sport, more than emotions, more than a fever that has the entire country in a chokehold? What if cricket is a playbook for life? That’s what it was (and still is) for Naveen Tewari, founder & CEO of InMobi, India’s first unicorn startup.
Growing up in Kanpur, Tewari lived and breathed cricket. An all-rounder in his school team. Watching every match intently. It was cricket that helped him take a quantum leap in the entrepreneurial scene. Watching India play in the 90s, he noticed a pattern. “It was all cautious strokes, safe bets and a reluctance to take bold risks. It reflected the mindset of an India still finding its footing on the world stage after liberalisation. Yet, as a young fan, I wondered – why play defensive when real wins come from aggression? Why not play to win as against playing to ‘not lose’?
It’s a question that shadowed him throughout his journey. Years later, he found himself in the position of cricketing greats. “When InMobi faced a make-or-break moment in 2016, I had two choices – drop anchor and sustain or go on the offensive.” He chose to “attack in the middle overs,” made aggressive bets and restructured their ad platform. The result? He turned the game around, redefining mobile advertising and launched Glance.
“It’s like how Rishabh Pant or SKY goes all out even as a middle-order batsman. What may look like him blindly gunning for the boundaries is actually a calculated move to hit it out of the park and up the run rate. The rules of entrepreneurship and cricket aren’t so different after all,” he remarked.
