Gurbaksh Chahal: Leveraging The Net
Gurbaksh Chahal's success story isn't only about building companies, but it is also about daring to dream big and chasing it relentlessly with courage. He has scaled the heights in the US as an immigrant entrepreneur. He has successfully founded Internet advertising firms, managed them well and also sold a few of them at huge profits.
At age 16, Gurbaksh Chahal founded his first advertising network firm. He subsequently sold it to ValueClick for $40 million, thus becoming a young millionaire. Thereafter, he co-founded BlueLithium, which became the fifth-largest Internet advertising network company in the US. However, he sold the company to Yahoo for $300 million in 2004. Since then he has founded other Internet-based companies, including RadiumOne, Gravity4, and BNN Breaking.
In 2010, Gurbaksh Chahal figured in Bloomberg Businessweek's list of the 15 Best Young Entrepreneurs of the Year. In 2011, Men's Health named him one of "The World’s Richest and Fittest Guys." In the following year, he was listed among the 25 Richest Entrepreneurs Under 30 by the Complex magazine. Also, he was listed among Ernst & Young's Entrepreneurs of the Year.
Amritsar To San Jose
Hailing from Tarn Taran Sahib, Amritsar, India, Gurbaksh Chahal is the youngest child of a Sikh family. His father Avtar Singh was a police officer, while mother Arjinder Chahal was a nurse. His parents immigrated to the US in 1985 in the height of the Khalistani insurgency. Gurbaksh was taken care of by his grandmother until he immigrated the following year at age four. Initially, his parents lived in San Jose, California. His father secured a job in the Postal Service and his mother found employment as an assistant nurse. He has three elder siblings, two sisters and a brother. Although all are devout followers of Sikhism, and men are expected to wear a turban as part of their religious practice, Gurbaksh abandoned it while growing up in the US after being subjected to systemic racial bulling.
In spite of his parents' encouragement to pursue medicine, Gurbaksh, who was an average student, dropped out of Independence High School in 1998 at age 16. He wished to pursue a career in Internet advertising much to the chagrin of his parents. In his teens he was a computer nerd and while still in high school, he had taken college-level computer courses in Evergreen Valley College. He soon launched a digital advertising company, ClickAgents. In the latter years, he thought it was the riskiest decision he ever made in his career. In order to support his parents, Gurbaksh started buying and reselling printers on eBay, after being turned away from a job at McDonald's.
After the successful launch and sale of ClickAgents, he founded BlueLithium in 2004, a company that specialized in behavioural targeting, a technique whereby web users' online habits are tracked to show customized ads. By 2006 it expanded operations to other countries after acquiring AdRevolver, and the company received the title of Top Innovator of the Year in the same year. In 2009, Gurbaksh launched gWallet, a venture in partnership with brand and game developers to bring users virtual currency offers. The startup worked directly with brands, which precluded the possibility of using any affiliate model. Disney, Best Buy, K-Mart, Nestle, and The History Channel used their video campaigns on the social network. In the following year, he launched RadiumOne, another online ad company but of a slightly different genre. It garnered a reputation for its patented ad-technology, which was valued at $500 million, which poised him to be a billionaire. It was purchased by RhythmOne, a public company on the London Stock exchange, for $22 million in 2017. Earlier in 2014, Gurbaksh had launched Gravity4, whose main area of business was gathering customer data about user experiences to allow marketers to improve their ad targets.
In 2019, Gurbaksh launched TaaraLabs, an incubator that helps companies to address problems involving artificial intelligence, IoT, and data sciences. The lab is connected to over 7 billion IoT devices globally. In the same year, he founded RedLotus in Hong Kong, which specializes in AI-based targeted advertising. This service was provided mainly in the form of customer engagement through this AI platform. In 2020, ProcureNet was founded, a supplier of pharmaceutical materials and vaccines consumables and a subsidiary of VendorCloud. The subsidiary uses machine learning to design, develop, market, sell, identify high-demand products via existing B2B and B2C marketplaces. He also set up RedLotus that utilizes branded content to create outcome driven advertising through AI. In 2022, he founded the now-defunct news website and aggregator BNN Breaking in Hong Kong. The website faced several controversies and hence was discontinued.
VeerOne
Gurbaksh Chahal founded VeerOne in 2023. He heads the latest venture as its Chairman and CEO. VeerOne is an enterprise intelligence platform, which redefines how organizations harness collective knowledge. The name 'Veer' represents both "brave" in its pioneering spirit and "best friend" in its role as a trusted digital companion.
VeerOne's revolutionary approach to enterprise intelligence delivers extraordinary results. It is not only 65% faster but has research capabilities, 50% enhanced decision-making speed, and 60% more efficient in reporting. Through its suite of state-of-the-art features, including AI-powered Threads for intelligent research, SmartVue for dynamic visualizations, and SmartBriefs for automated document creation, VeerOne has been transforming how enterprises turn scattered data into actionable wisdom. He has been shuttling between the US and Hong Kong managing his businesses.
Gurbaksh Chahal set up the Chahal Foundation in 2012, and since then he has been its chairman. The foundation supports the families of hate-crime victims, provides educational scholarship, combats child trafficking and helps in disaster relief efforts in India.
(Photo: Courtesy VeerOne)
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