NCA Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year
Platform Technology
Award recipient
Gurbaksh Chahal
CEO and founder
RadiumOne
Gurbaksh Chahal, CEO and founder of RadiumOne, is a 30-year-old veteran entrepreneur and social tolerance activist. Prior to RadiumOne, Gurbaksh founded two previous companies, ClickAgents and BlueLithium, which sold for $40 million and $300 million, respectively. He started his first company at 16 when he dropped out of high school.
In 2009, Chahal started working on RadiumOne, an advertising platform that adapts to today’s real-time, programmatic landscape. Within three years, he built the company to 250 employees.
RadiumOne is changing the face of online advertising through a unique combination of programmatic buying, proprietary data, patent-pending intelligence algorithms and multi-channel capabilities. Despite the increasingly crowded market landscape, the company has grown at an incredible pace with offices in San Francisco, New York, Chicago and London.
The company’s social advertising platform enables advertisers to instantly target and connect with customers who show real time interest in their brand. Each month, RadiumOne’s social sharing products engage with 700 million unique consumers and monitor more than 10 billion sharing events.
The company’s hashtag targeting is a recent innovation that enables advertisers to leverage and monetize their earned media, making paid media smarter and more effective.
With each new venture, Gurbaksh has identified a discrepancy in the advertising industry and addressed it with innovative solutions. His keen technical eye has played an integral role in redefining the way big brands approach their advertising strategies.
Chahal’s biggest interest outside of work is philanthropy. He was inspired by the deadly shooting of Sikh community members in Wisconsin and founded the BeProud foundation with a mission of ending hate. He wanted started to raise awareness about hate crimes, inspiring unity, tolerance and acceptance by leveraging the most powerful mediums of influence — television and social media.
He’s also the author of a bestselling book, “The Dream,” about his entrepreneurial journey.
How to reach: RadiumOne, www.radiumone.com
