Naveen Jain Net Worth: Founder of InfoSpace

Let’s talk about Naveen Jain, an entrepreneur who is particularly famous among people with an entrepreneurial spirit and who wants to make it big in India. He envisioned the idea of mining the Moon for minerals and co-founded a company called Moon Express to do just that. Can you even believe how high of a vision he has, like to start mining on the Moon? That sounds impossible for many, but not for Naveen Jain. And just so you know, at one time, Jain was worth $8 billion, but he has always primarily focused on value generation in society by changing this world through whatever means; one such line was technology innovation in space exploration and healthcare. So, today, we are going to take a good look at his life story, and here we go.

Early Life and Education

Naveen was born and grew up in 1959 in a small village in Uttar Pradesh, India, where the family lived in dire poverty. Because of the financial conditions of his family, Jain found himself transferring frequently to different schools, several of which were places devoid of basic facilities like chairs and desks, can you even imagine that? Well, even under these tough conditions, Jain had the eagerness to work hard and build a brighter future for himself. His diligence and hard work bore fruit in the form of the achievement of an intake at IIT Roorkee, where he completed his engineering degree. Then, just after graduating, he packed his bags and left for America with a mere $5 to his name, you know, just to pursue bigger opportunities in life.

His Story From Microsoft to InfoSpace

In America, Naveen began his career at Microsoft in the 1980s where he worked on projects like Windows NT and Windows 95. While he was successful and he completed the task at the company, he had a blast but he wanted more. In 1996, Naveen decided to leave Microsoft and establish his own company, InfoSpace.

InfoSpace, a site that provided online services such as email directories, had a steep rise in value, and just so you know, at the time it represented trading in a stock market which was at the time helpfully valued at $31 billion also making Naveen among the billionaires club.

The Fall of InfoSpace and Naveen’s Resilience

The dot-com bubble in the early years of the 2000s burst and that caused InfoSpace’s stock to tumble like a rock losing $138 to just $1.51 in value. In addition to these issues, Naveen and a few other employees faced accusations of accounting fraud that led to dozens of lawsuits. He resigned from the company in 2002 and ultimately, he paid $105 million in the settlement of an insider trading case. Even though there were some issues that tried to push him back, Jain would not back down. Rather, he would go ahead to create Intelius, which is a background information service that is also popular. But it was at the cost of $83 million that he had to pay in order for the one more lawsuit that came up during the InfoSpace era to be settled.

The Start Of Moon Express

In 2010, Jain and his partner started Moon Express, a company with a focus on mining resources like metals and water from the Moon. Moon Express had become the first-ever private company to receive authorization from the U.S. government for a lunar mission, did you know that already? Well, although it missed the deadline for the Google Lunar X Prize, the company changed gears and focused its efforts on the development of its NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

Viome and Healthcare Innovation

So far, Naveen Jain has also explored healthcare in addition to space. And just so you know he is a co-founder of Viome which is a company that uses research on the gut microbiome to develop personalized health suggestions. Their goal is to enable individuals to lead healthier lives based on their unique biological makeup. Recently, Viome has been declared capable by the FDA to produce a device for Cancer diagnosis at Stage 1 using a saliva sample, an invention that could potentially save so many lives.