Piyush Shah

Co-Founder, InMobi Group; President & COO, Glance; Angel Investor at inmobi

Reviewed Updated May 1, 2026

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Location Bengaluru, India
Check Size Angel checks; participates in syndicated seed/pre-seed rounds, often alongside other InMobi co-founders
Last Verified Investment InMobi (Corporate Minority (cofounder buy-in, INR 5.8 Cr)) — Jul 5, 2025
Social @piyushshah LinkedIn
Stage Focus
seed pre-seed angel
Sector Focus
enterprise-saas consumer-internet edtech healthtech fintech

Background

Piyush Shah is a Co-Founder of InMobi Group and President & COO of Glance, the AI-driven lock-screen content platform within the InMobi Group, headquartered in Bengaluru, India 12. While InMobi was originally founded as mKhoj in 2007 by Naveen Tewari, Mohit Saxena, Amit Gupta, and Abhay Singhal, Shah joined the company in October 2009 as Vice President and General Manager for Performance Advertising and Developer Platforms; he is publicly described by InMobi and Glance as one of the company’s co-founders 123.

Shah holds an MBA in Strategy and Marketing from the Indian School of Business (ISB) and a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering 12. (Unlike his InMobi co-founders Naveen Tewari, Amit Gupta, and Abhay Singhal — all IIT Kanpur — and Mohit Saxena — IIT Roorkee — Shah is not an IIT graduate 45.)

Shah began his entrepreneurial career at age 19 with an education-focused venture; Business World magazine recognized him as one of India’s Innovative Youth Entrepreneurs for that early company 12. Prior to joining InMobi, he held corporate roles at Citigroup as a Product Manager and at Deutsche Bank as Associate Vice President, where he was part of the core team that established the bank’s Payments & Private Banking business in India 12.

At InMobi, Shah has held multiple executive roles, including Chief Product Officer, Director, General Manager, and Vice President; he has been credited with leading InMobi’s performance advertising business, developer platforms initiatives, and the launch of TruFactor “from 0 to 1,” and with building the InMobi Marketing Cloud product organization 12. He moved to Glance as President & COO when the lock-screen subsidiary spun out, where he drives overall strategy and execution 2. The Economic Times named him to its “40 Under 40” list of India’s most influential young business leaders in 2017 12.

In December 2025, InMobi’s four cofounders — Tewari, Saxena, Singhal, and Shah — collectively bought back roughly 25-30% of SoftBank’s stake in InMobi in a deal worth approximately $250M, leaving the cofounders with around 60% of the company ahead of a planned IPO targeting a $4-5B valuation 6. Earlier that year, on a board resolution dated February 24, 2025 (publicly reported July 5, 2025), InMobi allotted INR 32 Cr (approximately $3.7M) of compulsorily convertible preference shares to its cofounders and Singapore-based Vatera Pte. Ltd.; Shah subscribed for INR 5.8 Cr, alongside Naveen Tewari (INR 14.5 Cr), Abhay Singhal (INR 7.3 Cr), Mohit Saxena (INR 0.6 Cr), and Vatera (INR 3.8 Cr) 7.

Stated Thesis

Shah has not published a formal investment thesis. InMobi and Glance describe him as actively investing in 20+ startups focused on “new-age enterprise SaaS, India-focused consumer tech, EdTech, and the HealthTech space” 12.

In a MarTech Series interview, Shah summarized his work style in one word as “Persistence” and described his success formula as “Huge ambition, strong grit and persistence with a dose of humility” 8. On the role of data and AI in technology investing, he said: “The biggest disruptions across the industry in technology will come from Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI)” 8.

Inferred Thesis

This analysis is based on 5 verified angel investments where Shah’s participation is confirmed by a primary or contemporaneous press source: Klub (2020-01-14 pre-seed), TrulyMadly (2021-04 pre-Series A), Factors.AI (2021-08 seed), Artium Academy (2022-10-10 seed), and Billion Hearts (2024-09 angel) — plus the July 2025 cofounder-led InMobi corporate-minority subscription 9101112137. Tracxn lists 27 portfolio companies for Shah and CB Insights tracks a similar disclosed-investments figure; both note an exit count of three (Onco, MissMalini, Zimmber) 14. Percentages below should be read as directional given the small verified sample.

Sector distribution (5 verified angel investments): Consumer-internet and edtech are the most visible themes — TrulyMadly (dating), Klub (revenue financing for D2C brands), Artium Academy (online music education), and Billion Hearts (consumer health) account for 4 of 5 (80%). Enterprise/SaaS — Factors.AI (B2B marketing analytics) — is 1 of 5 (20%) 910111213. Tracxn’s wider portfolio aligns with InMobi/Glance’s stated focus on enterprise SaaS, consumer tech, edtech, and healthtech 141.

Stage distribution: Exclusively seed and pre-seed for the verified angel deals. Shah typically participates as one of many syndicate angels rather than as a lead — the Klub round (Jan 2020) bundled him with ~40 other AngelList angels behind Sequoia Surge as lead; the Factors.AI round (Aug 2021) was led by Elevation Partners and Emergent Ventures with Shah among ~10 named angels; the Artium Academy round (Oct 2022) was led by Chiratae Ventures with Shah among five named individual entrepreneurs 91112.

Geographic focus: India-centric. All 5 verified portfolio companies are India-founded or India-operating, with Klub (Singapore-HQ but India-focused) as the cross-border exception 910111213.

Co-investor patterns: Shah’s most consistent co-investor pattern is the InMobi cofounder syndicate — Naveen Tewari, Abhay Singhal, Mohit Saxena, and Amit Gupta. Klub’s January 2020 pre-seed paired Shah with Tewari plus Kunal Shah (CRED), Rajesh Yabaji (Blackbuck), Ramakant Sharma (Livspace), and Amit Gupta of Yulu 9. Factors.AI’s August 2021 seed was the strongest InMobi-syndicate signal — all four named InMobi cofounders (Tewari, Singhal, Saxena, Gupta) plus Shah, alongside Girish Mathrubootham (Freshworks), Krish Subramanian and Rajaraman Santhanam (Chargebee), and Ramakant Sharma (LivSpace) 11. The TrulyMadly April 2021 pre-Series A bundled Shah with Singhal and Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Paytm) 10. The July 2025 InMobi corporate-minority subscription pulled in all four cofounders 7. Notably, Shah did NOT participate in Razorpay’s 2014 seed round, which involved only three of the four named InMobi cofounders (Tewari, Singhal, Gupta) and predates his angel activity 15.

Founder profile patterns: Network-driven sourcing. Verified deals are concentrated in the Indian operator-angel network, with Shah typically appearing alongside fellow InMobi cofounders, and among co-investors who are themselves operators of well-known Indian consumer/SaaS companies (Mamaearth’s Varun Alagh, Fraazo’s Vikas Dosala, M2P’s Madhusudhan R in the Artium Academy round; Ola’s Ankit Bhati, Myntra’s Raveen Sastry, MoEngage’s Narasimha Reddy in the Billion Hearts round) 1213.

Notable patterns vs. stated focus: Shah’s stated “20+ startups across enterprise SaaS, consumer tech, EdTech, and HealthTech” framing matches the verified portfolio’s distribution reasonably well 12. The verified record skews more consumer than the stated emphasis on enterprise SaaS, but the verified sample is small (5).

Notable exits: Tracxn records three Shah portfolio exits — Onco (acquired July 8, 2025), MissMalini (acquired April 11, 2025), and Zimmber (acquired May 5, 2017 by Quikr) 14.

Portfolio

Company Year Stage Source
Klub 2020-01-14 Pre-seed ($2M round) 9
TrulyMadly 2021-04-21 Pre-Series A (Rs 16 Cr round) 10
Factors.AI 2021-08 Seed ($2M round) 11
Artium Academy 2022-10-10 Seed ($3M round, Chiratae-led) 12
Billion Hearts 2024-09 Angel ($250K round) 13
InMobi 2025-07-05 Corporate Minority (INR 5.8 Cr cofounder subscription) 7

This table represents 6 verified entries against a wider portfolio of 27 companies tracked by Tracxn (which also names Stones2Milestones, Onco, MissMalini, Zimmber, and others) 14. Specific contemporaneous round-level citations linking Shah personally to those additional positions were not located within the time budget for this profile.

In Their Own Words

“I cannot imagine working with any other set of people. These are more than my co-founders and co-workers, they are my family.” — Piyush Shah on the InMobi founding team, MarTech Series interview 8

“The biggest disruptions across the industry in technology will come from Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI).” — Piyush Shah, MarTech Series interview 8

“Advertising when done right will have the perfect mix of art and science, making it appealing to every user.” — Piyush Shah, MarTech Series interview 8

“Huge ambition, strong grit and persistence with a dose of humility.” — Piyush Shah on his success formula, MarTech Series interview 8

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s Silicon Valley or Bellandur in Bangalore. For us, Bellandur was a headquarters, it was our Menlo Park, our Mountain View, and the ability for our folks to feel that more at the deepest level of, I would say belief, was very important.” — Piyush Shah, YourStory podcast on building India’s first unicorn 16

“The real thing that I would like to describe ourselves as, is a bunch of very passionate people who feel strongly about tech and product and people, and then how we can create a world-class company that can be in the likes of Google and Facebook out of India.” — Piyush Shah on InMobi’s mission, YourStory podcast 16

“If you stay at something for long, if there is absolute perseverance and hunger and resilience in solving a problem for long, and struggle is there, it will result into greatness, it will result into what really matters.” — Piyush Shah on perseverance, YourStory podcast 16

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials found. Shah has been publicly identified as an angel in rounds for Klub, TrulyMadly, Factors.AI, Artium Academy, and Billion Hearts 910111213, but specific first-person quotes from those founders (e.g., Anurakt Jain or Ishita Verma of Klub; Snehil Khanor of TrulyMadly; Praveen Das or Srikrishnan Ganesan of Factors.AI; Ashish Joshi of Artium Academy; Mayank Bidawatka of Billion Hearts) describing the working relationship with Shah personally were not located within the time budget for this profile.

Connections

  • Co-Founder, InMobi Group — Joined InMobi in October 2009 as Vice President and General Manager for Performance Advertising and Developer Platforms; has held Chief Product Officer, Director, GM, and VP roles, and is publicly identified by InMobi and Glance as a cofounder 123
  • President & COO, Glance — Drives overall vision, strategy, and execution for the InMobi Group’s AI-powered lock-screen platform, which became InMobi Group’s second unicorn in 2020 2
  • InMobi cofounder syndicate — Most consistent co-investor pattern: Klub 2020 pre-seed, TrulyMadly 2021 pre-Series A, and Factors.AI 2021 seed bundled Shah with one or more of his InMobi cofounders Naveen Tewari, Abhay Singhal, Mohit Saxena, and Amit Gupta; the July 2025 InMobi cofounder corporate-minority subscription pulled in all four named cofounders plus Shah 910117
  • Factors.AI 2021 seed angel network — Co-invested with Girish Mathrubootham (Freshworks), Krish Subramanian and Rajaraman Santhanam (Chargebee co-founders), and Ramakant Sharma (LivSpace) 11
  • Artium Academy 2022 seed angel network — Co-invested with Madhusudhan R (M2P Finance), Priyamvada Balaji (Lucas Indian Service), Varun Alagh (Mamaearth), and Vikas Dosala (Fraazo) 12
  • Billion Hearts 2024 angel network — Co-invested with Phanindra Sama (redBus), Ankit Bhati (Ola), Raveen Sastry (Myntra/Multiply Ventures), Mekin Maheshwari (ex-Flipkart Engineering President), and Narasimha Reddy (MoEngage) 13
  • Prior employer: Deutsche Bank — Associate Vice President; part of the core team that established Deutsche Bank’s Payments & Private Banking business in India 12
  • Prior employer: Citigroup — Product Manager 12
  • Indian School of Business (ISB) alumni network — MBA Strategy and Marketing 12
  • Delhi College of Engineering alumni network — Bachelor’s in Engineering 12

Sources

  1. InMobi, “Piyush Shah | Co-Founder, InMobi | President, Glance” leadership page, accessed May 2026. https://www.inmobi.com/company/leadership/piyush-shah↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  2. Glance, “Piyush Shah” leadership page, accessed May 2026. https://glance.com/us/about-us/leadership/piyush-shah↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  3. ContactOut, “Piyush Shah Email & Phone Number | Co-Founder, InMobi Group and President & COO, Glance” — career history listing October 2009 start as VP/GM Performance Advertising at InMobi, accessed May 2026. https://contactout.com/Piyush-Shah-57742673↩↩

  4. IIT Kanpur, “Mr Abhay Singhal” Distinguished Alumni profile (referenced for IIT Kanpur cohort context), accessed May 2026. https://www.iitk.ac.in/dora/profile/Mr-Abhay-Singhal↩

  5. Wikipedia, “InMobi” (referenced for founder education backgrounds), accessed May 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InMobi↩

  6. Inc42, “InMobi Cofounders Buy Back Major Stake From SoftBank,” December 4, 2025. https://inc42.com/buzz/inmobi-cofounders-buy-back-major-stake-from-softbank/↩

  7. Inc42, “Exclusive: IPO-Bound InMobi Bags INR 32 Cr From Cofounders,” July 5, 2025. https://inc42.com/buzz/exclusive-ipo-bound-inmobi-bags-inr-32-cr-from-cofounders/↩↩↩↩↩

  8. MarTech Series, “MarTech Interview with Piyush Shah, Co-Founder at InMobi,” accessed May 2026. https://martechseries.com/mts-insights/interviews/martech-interview-with-piyush-shah-co-founder-at-inmobi/↩↩↩↩↩↩

  9. Inc42, “Sequoia Surge Startup Klub Raises $2 Mn Pre-Seed Funding,” January 14, 2020. https://inc42.com/buzz/sequoia-surge-startup-klub-raises-2-mn-pre-seed-funding/↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  10. M&A Critique, “Indian dating app TrulyMadly raises Rs16 crore in pre-series A round,” April 21, 2021. https://mnacritique.mergersindia.com/news/indian-dating-app-trulymadly-raises-rs16-crore-in-pre-series-a-round/↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  11. The SaaS News, “Factors.AI Raises $2 Million in Seed Round,” August 2021. https://www.thesaasnews.com/news/factors-ai-raises-2-million-in-seed-round↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  12. Inc42, “Online Music Learning Platform Artium Academy Bags Funding From Chiratae Ventures, Others,” October 10, 2022. https://inc42.com/buzz/online-music-learning-platform-artium-academy-bags-funding-from-chiratae-ventures-others/↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  13. Outlook Business, “Mayank Bidawatka’s New Venture Billion Hearts Clinches Angel Funding From Leading Tech Founders,” September 18, 2024. https://www.outlookbusiness.com/start-up/mayank-bidawatkas-new-venture-billion-hearts-clinches-angel-funding-from-leading-tech-founders↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  14. Tracxn, “Piyush Shah - 2025 Portfolio & Founded Companies,” accessed May 2026. https://tracxn.com/d/people/piyush-shah/__bA1UanfyvIy1037-or7mnZsjXI7Swo3rajUZukqTg-Q↩↩↩↩

  15. Razorpay Blog, “Funding Announcement (Series A and Seed),” October 27, 2015. https://razorpay.com/blog/series-a-funding-2/↩

  16. YourStory, “InMobi Co-founder Piyush Shah on building India’s first unicorn,” February 2023. https://yourstory.com/2023/02/inmobi-co-founder-piyush-shah-building-indias-first-unicorn↩↩↩