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Nihal Mehta

Nihal Mehta

Nihal Mehta (born April 22, 1977 in Iowa [1]) is an American technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Mehta is a Founding General Partner at Eniac Ventures. He has more than 15 years experience in marketing technologies through founding five startups and investing in over 100 since 1999. [1]

Personal Life

Nihal Mehta lives in Chelsea, New York, with his wife Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, their son, Shaan and their beagle-bulldog, Stanley.

Education

In 1999, Nihal Mehta graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in Computer Science. At UPenn, Nihal was a member of the Philomathean Society and the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. [1]

Career

TechCrunch video interview with Nihal Mehta and the partners of Eniac Ventures about the $100 million fund they closed in April, 2017

TechCrunch video interview with Nihal Mehta and the partners of Eniac Ventures about the $100 million fund they closed in April, 2017

Nihal Mehta started his first company Philly Tonight an online city guide website for the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1999 and served as its CEO. He quickly raised a million dollars in angel financing and grew the company to 15 cities renaming it Urban Groove. At its peak the company had 2-3 million unique users. The company's business model was to create quality content about the city on the website and sell advertising space to businesses in the area. However when the dotcom bubble crashed in 2001 the company ran out of capital and went bankrupt. [1]

In 2001, Nihal Mehta founded the mobile marketing agency Ipsh!

with Mike Jelley and Par Gandhi and served as the company's CEO.

He started Ipsh!

as a spin off of a feature he developed for Urban Groove and rolled over all the investors from Urban Groove into Ipsh!.

The company started by signing up small record labels as clients and giving users who signed up for text message updates on new music releases.

The company then grew to selling to large record labels like Warner Brothers Records before selling to brands outside the music space. [1] In 2005, the company was acquired for under $10 million by Omnicom. Nihal stayed on leading Ipsh! until September, 2007.

In 2007, Nihal Mehta founded the social city guide app buzzd with Deepen Shah. The app uses location data from social media posts and check-ins to suggest nearby events to users.

In 2010, buzzd rebranded as LocalResponse a web-based tool that allows local businesses to respond to the “check-in” on social media sites with marketing campaigns to promote transactions.

LocalResponse aggregates real-­‐time social media check-­‐ins from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, Instagram and dozens of other services to provide a simple interface for local businesses to directly respond to their most influential and valuable customers.

As the founding CEO, Nihal Mehta grew LocalResponse's revenues 2153% over a three year period, which placed the company to #204 (#14 in NYC) to the 2014 Inc. 5000's Fastest Growing Companies and #67 to the 2013 Forbes list of America's Most Promising Companies.

In December, 2011 Nihal Mehta became a founding partner in the Indian Internet Group (IIG) a venture capital firm focused on making early stage investments in Indian technology and e-commerce start-ups.

At IIG he has invested in 24/7 Techies, abreakplease, and ekSMS among others.

Nihal founded M1 “Mobile-First” Summit in 2014, bringing together thousands of mobile innovators with two events/year in NYC and San Francisco.

Prior to founding Eniac Ventures, Nihal angel invested in AdMob (acquired by Google), SwiftKey (acquired by Microsoft), Tala, Tapad (acquired by Telenor), and Uber (company) among other startups.

In September, 2008 Nihal founded the venture capital firm Eniac Ventures with Hadley Harris, Vic Singh, and Tim Young. The firm focuses on seed stage investments and has over $100 million dollars under management with offices in New York City and San Francisco. At Eniac, Nihal has invested in Onswipe, Boxed, and Fitocracy among other startups.

Philanthropy

After the 9/11 attacks, Nihal Mehta and a few friends launched Project Ahmisa, a benefit for victims of hate crimes. They initially raised money to benefit awareness and help Muslim and Hindu families who were targeted for hate crimes. It then morphed into a foundation that empowers children with music education as music can help create self confidence and help kids with empowerment. “Hopefully when things slow down in other ventures, I can spend more time on this,” says Mehta. “It keeps me balanced.”

Awards

  • AlleyWatch’s “100 NYC Tech Influencers You Need to Know,” (2014)

  • Semi-finalist for "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Ernst & Young (2013)

  • Top 100 "Coolest People in NY Tech," by Business Insider

  • "NYC tech influencer" by VentureBeat, one of the "25 People Every New Founder Should Meet in New York Tech" (2012)

  • Top "25 Up-And-Coming Startup CEO in New York" by Business Insider (2012)

  • AlwaysOn "Power Player NYC."

  • (2011)

  • Top 10 New York City "Game Changer" in the New York Enterprise Report (2010)

  • Top 20 RCR Wireless News"Mobile Movers and Shakers" (2008)

  • Businessweek"M-Commerce Baron" ( 2006)

  • Ad Age's "Top 20 Marketers in Their 20s" (2005) [1]

Nihal also frequently guest lectures at business schools around the United States on entrepreneurship and mobile marketing, and is published in over 15 books and white papers on the subject.

[1]

References

[1]
Citation Linkmixergy.comMixergy.com interview with Nihal Mehta
Jul 14, 2016, 10:03 AM
[2]
Citation Linkcnbc.comCNBC article about a humbling lesson Nihal Mehta learned from his first startup Urban Groove
Dec 17, 2017, 1:02 AM
[3]
Citation Linktechcrunch.comTechCrunch article about Nihal Mehta's second startup buzzd
Dec 17, 2017, 3:35 AM
[4]
Citation Linkthenextweb.comThe Next Web article about Nihal Mehta and how finds balance
Dec 17, 2017, 4:14 AM
[5]
Citation Linkeniac.vcEniac Ventures website
Dec 17, 2017, 4:32 AM
[6]
Citation Linklivemint.comLive Mint article about the India Internet Group
Dec 17, 2017, 4:44 AM
[7]
Citation Linklinkedin.comNihal Mehta on LinkedIn
Dec 17, 2017, 4:46 AM
[8]
Citation Linkyoutube.comStand Up For Passion: The Power of Failure: Reshma Saujani and Nihal Mehta
Dec 17, 2017, 5:52 AM
[9]
Citation Linkbits.blogs.nytimes.comLink on nytimes.com
Jul 14, 2016, 10:03 AM
[10]
Citation Linktechcrunch.comTechCrunch article about buzzd rebranding as Local Response and pivoting towards to the B2B market
Jul 14, 2016, 10:03 AM
[11]
Citation Linkblogs.wsj.comLink on wsj.com
Jul 14, 2016, 10:03 AM
[12]
Citation Linkventurebeat.comLink on venturebeat.com
Jul 14, 2016, 10:03 AM
[13]
Citation Linkforbes.comLink on forbes.com
Jul 14, 2016, 10:03 AM
[14]
Citation Linkadage.comLink on adage.com
Jul 14, 2016, 10:03 AM
[15]
Citation Linkbusinessinsider.comLink on businessinsider.com
Jul 14, 2016, 10:03 AM
[16]
Citation Linkbusinessinsider.comLink on businessinsider.com
Jul 14, 2016, 10:03 AM
[17]
Citation Linkbusinessinsider.comLink on businessinsider.com
Jul 14, 2016, 10:03 AM
[18]
Citation Linknyreport.comProfile done on April 23, 2010
Jul 14, 2016, 10:03 AM
[19]
Citation Linkbusinessweek.comBusinessWeek article on March 24, 2006
Jul 14, 2016, 10:03 AM
[20]
Citation Linkyoutube.comNihal Mehta on How to Stay Persistent While Growing Your Company
Dec 17, 2017, 5:53 AM