Samir Arora is an Indian-American businessman and CEO of Sage Digital since April 2016, the former CEO of Mode Media from 2003 to April 2016. He was CEO and chairman of the web design company NetObjects, Inc. from 1995 to 2001 and at Apple Inc. from 1982 to 1991.
Education and career
Samir Arora was born in New Delhi, India. He studied electrical and electronic engineering at Birla Institute of Technology and Science. Arora has an EMP from INSEAD, attended Executive Education at Harvard Business School, and holds a diploma in Sales and Marketing from the London Business School. Samir Arora worked at Apple in Software and New Media from 1982 to 1991. Arora wrote a white paper called "Information Navigation: The Future of Computing" in late 1986 while working directly for the chairman and CEO of Apple, John Sculley. He left Apple to found the spin-off Rae Technology from Apple. From 1992 to 1995, Arora was chairman and chief executive officer of Rae Technology. In 1995 Samir Arora co-founded NetObjects, Inc. and together with a design and development team including David Kleinberg, Clement Mok and his brother, Sal Arora, created NetObjects Fusion, one of the first Web design products that allowed Web sites to be designed, structured and created without programming. In 1997, after the launch of NetObjects Fusion, IBM invested approximately $100 million in a share exchange to buy 80% of NetObjects, corresponding to a valuation of around $150 million. NetObjects, Inc. went public on NASDAQ in 1999 with IBM staying the majority shareholder. From June 2003 to February 2004, Arora served as chairman of the board of Tickle, Inc., one of the first social networking sites founded in 1999. Tickle was acquired by Monster.com in May 2004. In 2003, Mode Media, Inc. was formed by a number of people including Arora. Arora was the interim CEO of Glam Media from 2003 to 2005, and CEO from 2006 to 2016. For his work at Mode Media, Arora was included by MIN Magazine in the Digital Hot List 2008 and was named Web 2.0's Don Draper as one of the 30 men shaping our digital future by GQ Magazine On 15 September 2016, six months after the departure of Samir Arora and Marc Andreessen, Mode Media U.S. shut down its operations. In June, 2017, Mode Media U.S. was acquired by BrideClick, who changed the company name to Glam, Inc. Mode Media continued its operations in Japan and Asia and in January, 2017 an investment group Montaro purchased Mode Media in Japan. In March, 2017 shareholders appointed Samir Arora as the executive chairman of Mode Media in Japan to help with its turnaround to rebuild Mode's technology and operations. In April 2016, Samir Arora founded Sage Digital, a new AI locations platform startup that uses accurate and reliable sources for location maps data and currently operates as its chief executive officer.
