Manish Maheshwari

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Manish Maheshwari
मनीष माहेश्वरी
Manish Maheshwari.jpg
Maheshwari in 2023
BornJanuary 1977
Tatanagar, Bihar (prior to 2000), Jharkhand (post 2000), India
EducationMBA, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Alma mater Shri Ram College of Commerce
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Occupation(s)Mason Fellow, Harvard University
Co-Founder, Fanory.ai
Former Head of Twitter India
Former CEO-Digital of Network18

Manish Maheshwari is an Indian technology entrepreneur and executive. He is currently a Mason Fellow at Harvard University, focusing on public policy implications of AI. [1]

Contents

Maheshwari is a TEDx speaker, [2] an active MENSA member, and a PADI-certified diver who speaks five languages.

Early life and education

He completed his primary schooling in a local Nepali school in Biratnagar and later attended Modern India School in Kathmandu. He completed the rest of his schooling on scholarship at Maheshwari Public School, a community-run school in Jaipur.[ citation needed ]

For his undergraduate education, he went to Shri Ram College Commerce at the University of Delhi. There, he served as editor for the college magazine. He won the student body elections and served as the president of the History & Political Science Society. He has also won the Principal Madan Mohan Medal. [3]

In 2004, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania accepted him into the two-year full-time MBA program. There he was elected co-president of the Asia Club, one of the largest student-run clubs on campus. During the summer break, he volunteered in East Timor under the Wharton International Volunteer Program. [4] He graduated with honours while also winning the Shils-Zeidman Award, the highest award for entrepreneurship at Wharton. [5]

Career

Maheshwari began his career in 1999 with Procter & Gamble (P&G) in Mumbai [6] where he worked on the business of Vicks brand. [7]

After earning MBA at Wharton, he started at McKinsey & Company in New York, where he advised Fortune 500 companies on new market entry and growth strategies for emerging markets. [5] [7] He then moved to the Bay Area and joined Intuit, a consumer software company headquartered in Mountain View, California. [7] There he worked with Intuit's founder, Scott Cook and Intuit engineers, Manish Shah and Clinton Nielsen to explore a text-based mobile platform for news and information. In 2011, he, along with Scott Cook, Manish Shah and Clinton Nielsen, co-founded txtWeb, an app development platform. [5]

Maheshwari (left) with Intuit founder, Scott Cook (middle) during early days of TxtWeb in 2011 Scott Cook With Manish Maheshwari.jpg
Maheshwari (left) with Intuit founder, Scott Cook (middle) during early days of TxtWeb in 2011
Maheshwari (left) with Bill Gates (right) at TED (conference), c. 2011 Bill Gates with Manish Maheshwari.jpg
Maheshwari (left) with Bill Gates (right) at TED (conference), c. 2011

At its peak, txtWeb had over 11 million users using one or more of the 3500 active apps built by developers and businesses across India. [8] It grew to 1 billion transactions by 2014. [9] [10] It was recognised by GSMA as a global case study on empowerment through access to information. [11] It helped voters make an informed decision in the Indian general election in 2014. [12] txtWeb went on to win many innovation awards. Notable among them were mBillionth Award South Asia [13] and NASSCOM Innovation Award Runner-up in 2013. [14] India Today magazine recognised Maheshwari as one of India's top 10 innovators in the year 2014. [15]

Maheshwari was then hired by Flipkart to set up and grow Seller Ecosystem for Flipkart's marketplace. [16] [17] Under him, between February 2015 and February 2016, Flipkart's seller base grew tenfold. [18] He worked on making selling online a mass movement in India by training sellers in areas such as the functioning of the market place, cataloging, order management, promotion of products and providing quality service to customers. [19] He started initiatives such as ‘Flipkart Seller Campus’ and ‘Flipkart Helping Hands’ to empower and prepare small sellers during the peak festive demand season by creating a pool of trained manpower across the country who can be deployed under the plug-and-play model. [20] He also pioneered global brand licensing for Indian sellers. [21] [22]

In April 2016, Maheshwari joined as the CEO of Network18 Digital to grow its online offerings which included Moneycontrol.com, Firstpost.com, News18.com, CricketNext.com, CNBC-TV18.com, Yatra.com, Homeshop18.com and BookMyShow.com. [5] [23] [24] He pushed the group beyond just web to encompass a gamut of digital services enabled by mobile, machine learning, programmatic ad buying, Augmented reality (AR), and Virtual reality (VR). [25] The group became the most visited and viewed media network on YouTube as per Vidooly's News Network Report for September to November 2017. [26] Moneycontrol also launched India's first smartwatch application to have voice search for stocks enabled on the Apple watch. [27] Maheshwari is credited with the regional expansion of the group through growth in 13 Indian languages resulting in a three-digit increase in traffic across platforms with corresponding growth in revenues. [25] He pioneered a subscription model for Moneycontrol wherein subscribers paid a small premium for business research and stock reports. [25] In two years after his joining, the company crossed the threshold of 100 million unique digital visitors per month with well-diversified revenues encompassing advertising, subscription, branded content, and syndications. [28]

In April 2019, Maheshwari joined as the head of Twitter's India business to oversee Twitter India's teams in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. [29] [30] He worked with a cross-functional team amidst COVID-19-related operational challenges. [31] When the coronavirus pandemic ravaged India, Twitter became the virtual helpline to organise and manage relief operations across the country. [32] He pushed for localising the product for India and adding a preferred Indian language option on the platform, which helped algorithms surface content in that language to the user. Non-English tweets in India grew to 50% of overall tweets. [33] India became one of the fastest-growing audience markets for Twitter globally and saw its fastest revenue growth in India in five years. [33] [34]

Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey (left) with Maheshwari (right) in 2018 Jack Dorsey with Manish Maheshwari.jpg
Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey (left) with Maheshwari (right) in 2018

Following the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk in 2022, Maheshwari has been vocal about his concerns with respect to significant layoffs in India, change in verification policy, and its detrimental impact on the two-sided network effect, which made Twitter influential in India. [35] [36] He is an expert commentator on latest developments in the area of digital technology, digital content and social media. His articles are featured in leading publications and he is invited for interviews and panel discussions on technology trends by top media outlets such as CNBC, The Indian Express and The Economic Times. [37] [38] [39]

Manish Maheshwari, former head of Twitter India, co-founded Invact Metaversity, an edtech platform integrating education and the metaverse. The startup sought to innovate through the use of metaverse technology in education and related sectors. However, in mid-2022, irreconcilable differences emerged between the co-founders regarding the company's strategic direction—whether to focus on edtech or prioritize metaverse aspirations which culminated in Maheshwari stepping down as the CEO. [40]

In early 2023, Maheshwari came out of stealth mode with an AI-enabled copilot for creators, called Fanory.ai. [41] It enabled creators to generate incremental revenue in addition to what they can continue to earn via brand endorsements and advertising. [42] Fanory.ai received a majority investment from JetSynthesys and was backed by the family offices of cricketing legend, Sachin Tendulkar, Serum Institute of India's Adar Poonawalla and Infosys Co-founder, Kris Gopalakrishnan. [43] [44] As part of the investment transaction, Maheshwari was appointed President of JetSynthesys. [45] [46]

In 2024, Harvard University selected Maheshwari for Mason Fellowship to research AI’s role in empowering individuals and improving the financial security of marginalized creators. [47] [1]

Controversy

On May 2, 2022, Invact Metaversity cancelled its first cohort for its metaverse-MBA program. [48]

On May 25, 2022, angel investor Gergely Orosz wrote an email to fellow angel investors alleging that "“Manish has been bullying Tanay (co-founder of Invact) into silence, threatening to use the company funds of $1.7M - including our angel investment money - to sue him, should Tanay speak ill of him in public." also adding that "Manish is keeping the company hostage." and "I was warned Manish will lie to investors. Now I have proof." [49]

In response to public uproar, Maheshwari finally stepped down as CEO on May 27,2022. [50] [51]

Awards and recognition

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References

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  2. ↑ Maheshwari, Manish Maheshwari, Priya (June 1, 2020), Taking the Path Less Travelled , retrieved November 25, 2022{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. 1 2 "India versus Twitter: The man at the center of the controversy". Quartz. June 30, 2021. Retrieved November 25, 2022.
  4. ↑ "Manish Maheshwari: All about the Twitter India chief". sg.finance.yahoo.com. June 29, 2021. Retrieved November 25, 2022.
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  22. ↑ "Flipkart unveils global brand licensing for Indian sellers". Hindustan Times. December 28, 2015. Retrieved November 26, 2022.
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  24. ↑ sundarajan, Priya (March 31, 2016). "Network18 appoints Flipkart's Manish Maheshwari as CEO of Web18". www.thehindubusinessline.com. Retrieved March 1, 2022.
  25. 1 2 3 "BUILDING NETWORK18 DIGITAL IN 18 MONTHS". Impact is weekly print magazine publishing information on Advertising and Ad Marketing news specifically targeted towards Agency & Business Managers. Retrieved November 26, 2022.
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  27. ↑ Bureau, Adgully (November 14, 2017). "Network18 Digital launches India's first voice enabled smart watch app". www.adgully.com. Retrieved November 26, 2022.{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  28. ↑ KVN, Rohit (April 22, 2019). "Who is Manish Maheshwari? Twitter India gets new MD". www.ibtimes.co.in. Retrieved November 26, 2022.
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  33. 1 2 Mandavia, Megha; Krishnan, Raghu. "'Non-English tweets are now 50% of the total': Twitter India MD". The Economic Times. Retrieved November 26, 2022.
  34. ↑ "Setting Sail season 2 Ep.2 | Twitter India MD Manish Maheshwari explains how India is one of the fastest growing audience market globally". Moneycontrol. June 22, 2020. Retrieved November 26, 2022.
  35. ↑ "If Twitter does not preserve its two-sided network effect between creators and consumers, it can't remain powerful and influential as it is now". cnbctv18.com. November 17, 2022. Retrieved November 26, 2022.
  36. ↑ "elon musk: Morning Brief Podcast: Twitter tales: What next after Elon Musk's firing spree left 20% staff in India | The Economic Times Podcast". The Economic Times. Retrieved November 26, 2022.
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  41. ↑ Lohchab, Himanshi (November 29, 2023). "AI startup for creators Fanory offers guaranteed hourly monetisation rates". The Economic Times. ISSN   0013-0389 . Retrieved March 24, 2024.
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  46. ↑ Ahaskar, Abhijit (January 24, 2023). "JetSynthesys acquires former Twitter India head's creator monetization platform". mint. Retrieved January 25, 2023.
  47. 1 2 "AI entrepreneur Manish Maheshwari bags Mason Fellowship at Harvard". Deccan Herald. Retrieved December 3, 2024.
  48. ↑ "Edtech startup Invact Metaversity founders now stand at crossroads after cancelling its first cohort". Moneycontrol. Archived from the original on January 25, 2023. Retrieved December 18, 2024.
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  50. ↑ Anupam, Suprita (May 27, 2022). "After Messy Cofounder Clash, CEO Manish Maheshwari Quits Metaversity; But Will It Refind Momentum?". Inc42 Media. Retrieved December 18, 2024.
  51. ↑ "Cofounder Manish Maheshwari agrees to leave Invact Metaversity, Tanay Pratap to be CEO". The Economic Times. May 27, 2022. ISSN   0013-0389 . Retrieved December 18, 2024.
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