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NRI Billionaire Naveen Jain had $5 in his pocket
when he came to the U.S.
Los Angeles, April 04, 2022
NRIpress.club/Sunder Singh/Gary Singh
Now Naveen Jain is worth an estimated $8 billion.
NRI Naveen Jain, founder of InfoSpace, Moon Express, and most recently, dietary testing startup Viome, has learned in life.
Born into poverty in India, Jain spent a lot of his childhood moving from city to city, attending desolate schools lacking basic furnishings like chairs and tables.
But despite receiving a less than subpar primary education, Jain attended the prestigious IIT (also known as the Indian MIT), obtained his MBA, and landed in the U.S. for a work training. He had only $5 to spare.
“Immigrant entrepreneurs…we all come from very humble backgrounds. The goal in life is to stay focused on what makes life better for everyone else around. Focus on your karma,” says Jain.
After arriving in the U.S. and working for several tech startups, Jain moved up the ranks of Silicon Valley, working closely with Bill Gates at Microsoft
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NRI Billionaire Entrepreneur’s Moon Express Company
To Send First Private Craft To Moon
Los Angeles, Aug 07, 2016
NRIpress.club/Sunder Singh/Gary Singh
Moon Explorer, a company co-founded by Naveen Jain has received United States government approval to launch a moon lander that will explore it for minerals that can be mined. Jain is seen floating in an aircraft that executes a manoevre to simulate weightlessness in space.
- An audacious plan to mine the surface of the moon
- As Naveen Jain, co-founder and chairman of Moon Express, said, “We have mapped every inch of the moon, both topographically and mineralogically.” As a result, Moon Express has already outlined four categories of resources that might be mined in the future – platinum group metals, rare earth elements, helium-3, and, yes, moon rocks.
Moon Express, or MoonEx, an American privately held early stage company formed by a group of Silicon Valley and space entrepreneurs, with the goal of winning the Google Lunar X Prize, and ultimately mining the Moon for natural resources of economic value
- Moon Express offer commercial lunar robotic transportation and data services with a long-term goal of mining the Moon for resources, including elements that are rare on Earth, including niobium, yttrium and dysprosium
- Moon Express held its first successful test flight of a prototype lunar lander system called the Lander Test Vehicle (LTV) that was developed in partnership with NASA on June 30, 2011.
- September 11, 2011, Moon Express announced that it had set up a robotics lab for a lunar probe named the "Moon Express Robotics Lab for INnovation" (MERLIN) and hired several engineering students who had successfully competed at the FIRST Robotics Competition
- Moon Express announced that it will work with International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA) to put a shoebox-sized astronomical telescope on the Moon.
- In 2012, MoonEx had 20 employees. MoonEx acquired one of the other Google Lunar X-Prize teams, Rocket City Space Pioneers
- MoonEx added Paul Spudis as Chief Scientist and Jack Burns as Science Advisory Board Chair in September 2013.
- Moon Express successfully conducted several free flight tests of its flight software utilizing the NASA Mighty Eagle lander test vehicle, under a Reimbursable Space Act Agreement with the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in November, 2013
- In December 2013, MoonEx unveiled the MX-1 lunar lander, a toroidal robotic lander that uses high-test hydrogen peroxide as its rocket propellant to support vertical landing on the lunar surface.
- NASA announced that Moon Express Inc. was one of the three companies selected for the Lunar CATALYST initiative On April 30, 2014
- The Moon Express "MX-1" spacecraft is designed to be launched as a secondary payload and to fly to the Moon from GEO.
- In December 2014, Moon Express successfully conducted flight tests of its "MTV-1X" lander test vehicle at the Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility, becoming the first private company (and GLXP team) to demonstrate a commercial lunar lander.
- In October 2015, Moon Express announced a launch contract with Rocket Lab to launch three Moon Express robotic spacecraft to land on the Moon, with two launches manifested in 2017, utilizing an Electron launch vehicle.
- In June 2016, the Federal Aviation Administration approved plans for a mission to deliver a commercial package to the moon in late 2017
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Bought 700 meteorites as collection:
Naveen Jain, sometimes talks lke a 20 years old young person. One day he said to his fellow entrepreneur, "it is a meteorite, How do you get one of these?... How much is it, a million dollars?. I will pay you twice." Since then he bought 700 meteorites as collection worth around 9.00 million.
Moon Express will spread your ashes on the moon — for a price:
Moon Express co-founder Naveen Jain said the delivery of one’s ashes for lunar interment would be based on a “payload” price of $3 million per kilo.
Since the cremated remains of adults generally weigh between 4 and 6 pounds, the indicated price range is $5.4 million to $8.1 million.
Better hurry, though, if you want to be first. “We already have a long list,” Jain said.
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Indian American's company approved for moon landing
By Arul Louis
New York, Aug 4 (IANS) An Indian American entrepreneur has begun a countdown for launching a moon lander next year after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced it has approved his company's venture.
Naveen Jain, the founder of Moon Express, called the US government OK on Wednesday for the MX1-E moon lander "another giant leap for humanity".
"In the immediate future we envision bringing precious resources, metals and moon rocks back to the Earth," the graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology-Roorkee and XLRI Jamshedpur said on his company's website.
The MX-1E will ride to the moon orbit on a space vehicle from Rocket Lab USA.
One of that company's backers is Khosla Ventures created by Vinod Khosla, the venture capitalist who is an Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi graduate and who co-founded Sun Microsystems.
Moon Express CEO Bob Richards cited the discovery of water on the moon as an incentive for lunar ventures.
The discovery was accomplished by the Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO) Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft with ISRO's Moon Impact Probe (MIP) and NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) that it carried on board.
"The recent discovery of water on the moon is an economic game changer for humanity's future," he said. "Water is the oil of the solar system and the moon has become a gas station in the sky."
Moon Express is the first private company to get government approval for a moon venture.
The FAA described the MX-1E as a spacecraft that can orbit to the moon, make a soft landing on the lunar surface, and move on it by making "hops".
Moon Express needed the FAA approval because the Outer Space Treaty requires private ventures to be authorised by a government that has signed th treaty.
It will be eligible to compete for the Google Lunar XPRIZE of $20 million for the first private company to land a craft on the moon, make it travel at least 500 metres on the lunar surface and send back videos.
Moon Express has already won two preliminary XPRIZE awards for demonstrating its technological capability to land on the moon and send images.
The awards are the $1 million Landing Prize and the $250,000 Imaging Prize.
Jain founded Moon Express in 2010. Previously he had launched two internet companies, InfoSpace and Intellus.
"The sky is not the limit for Moon Express -- it is the launch pad," he said. "Space is our only path forward to ensure our survival and create a limitless future for our children."
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