Alok Kejriwal – Introduction and Background
Alok Kejriwal is currently the CEO and Co-founder of Games2win, his fourth Company. The Walt Disney Company acquired his previous Company Mobile2win.
Games2win is a global mobile games business that has 400 million game downloads and entertains over 15 million players a month.
Alok is one of the earliest Internet Entrepreneurs in India to have achieved multiple exits from his startups. He is a Power speaker and an engaging presenter with a passion for innovation, out-of-box thinking, and business creativity.
Background
Alok has been a successful entrepreneur for a period spanning over two decades. In 1998, Alok created contests2win.com – India’s first online contesting site that spearheaded the creation of digital promotions in the world. Contests2win was responsible for creating the concept of advergaming – the fun merger of advertising and gaming for the first time in the world.
This innovation led to most of the Fortune 500 global brands partnering with the site. Top brands such as Pepsi, Nestle and L’Oreal were introduced to the Internet in India via Contes2win.com.
In 2001, Alok and his team founded Mobile2win in China to extend the business model of Contests2win in China. Softbank – one of Alok’s early investors had invited Alok to China. Mobile2win was responsible for pioneering the first-ever TV powered SMS contesting format in the world. That led to the top brands in the world also working with Mobile2win. In 2002, Alok and his team launched Mobile2win India. Mobile2win Indian was responsible for starting the first-ever television powered SMS response platform in India such as the Indian Idol voting platform from Sony Television.
Exits
In 2006 Alok successfully sold his Mobile Startup Mobile2win China to Walt Disney and Mobile2win India to Norwest Venture Partners in China and India respectively.
Venture Capital Success
Alok has successfully raised venture capital from some of the world’s leading VCs such as ICICI, eVentures (A JV of Star Television, Softbank, and Mr P.K. Mittal), Softbank China, Siemens Acceleration, Clearstone Venture Partners, Silicon Valley Bank, Nirvana Venture Partners.
Book Writer
Alok’s released his first book “Why I stopped wearing my socks” in September 2018. The book describes his journey from working in his socks factory to launching several Internet businesses. “Why I Stopped wearing my socks” hit the #1 Top Business Book ranks on Amazon India several times. In September 2019, the book won the prestigious CK Prahlad Best Indian Book Award for the best business book of 2019. Shri Narayan Murthy felicitated Alok and handed him the prize and citation on behalf of the CK
Prahlad family.
In October 2020, Alok released his second book “The Cave”. The book is the story of his spiritual adventures as a ‘capitalist and spiritualist’ and has real-life stories and his personal takeaways from them. The book has been very well received, and constantly ranks amongst the top lists of Spiritual, Self-Help and Mindfulness titles in India on Amazon.
Speaker & Content Creator
Alok is a passionate speaker, presenter, and content creator. He has actively spoken at conferences and private functions. Some of his presentations have included venues such as :
- The Wharton and Harvard Business Schools
- Many of the IIMs and IITs in India
- Deepak Chopra’s The Chopra Foundation conference ‘Sages & Scientists’
- The India Today Conclave & Business Today MindRush
- TEDx Mumbai
- At Corporate and Industry events for esteemed organizations such as Cognizant, Tata Group, Religare, Deloitte, Bajaj Finserve, Kotak Securities & others.
- In 2016 Alok spoke at the Rashtrapati Bhavan to speak on Entrepreneurship in the august company of the President of India.
- His expertise is entrepreneurship, starting up, and he has a deep understanding of the digital and mobile industry.
Alok is frequently invited by Indian business television channels to share his opinion or debate on a current topic related to startups or technology. In 2017, Alok was a judge in MTV India’s “MTV Dropout Pvt. Ltd” – a television show that focused on entrepreneurship and Starting Up.
Alok has written over five hundred articles and blogs, some of which have featured in the Wall Street Journal, The Economic Times and The Economist Blog. His collection of writings can are available here.
Social Efforts
Alok is passionate about entrepreneurship and is the founder of therodinhoods.wpengine.com – a community of entrepreneurs. Every week, Alok mentors entrepreneurs pro-bono. Alok’s wish is to make a million entrepreneurs bloom.
Alok writes a microblog almost daily using the #dhandhekibaat (business talk) that focusses on business learnings and case studies.
Outside of work, Alok is an ardent Art of Living Teacher, meditator & spiritual seeker. Alok and his wife Chhavi conduct Happiness Programs of the Art of Living (first level of meditation) every month in South Mumbai.
Public Profile links
Press Pictures
More pictures on this link – Profile Pictures
