Ambarish Mitra

Ambarish Mitra

Mitra in 2015
Born (1979-03-09) 9 March 1979
Residence London, England, United Kingdom
Occupation CEO & Co-Founder of Blippar

Ambarish "Rish" Mitra (born 9 March 1979) is an Indian entrepreneur. He is best known for founding Blippar, a visual search, artificial intelligence and augmented reality (AR) company based in the United Kingdom, of which he is the CEO.[1] Ambarish was named UK Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young in 2016 [2]

Early life and education

Born into a middle class Indian family in Kolkata India, Mitra lived in Indian mining town Dhanbad till the age of 14 where he attended the De Nobili School, FRI. Mitra ran away from home as a teenager following a dispute with his family about his future.[3] He moved into a slum in Delhi where he worked selling magazines door-to-door by day, and in a tea stall by night.[4] While living the slum, Mitra entered and won a business plan competition for "e-businesses" which he spotted in an English-language newspaper, netting him $10,000 to start what would become womeninfoline.com, an internet portal for women.[3] After taking the company public with a successful IPO,[5] Mitra relocated to the United Kingdom to continue his education, earning a master's degree from the London School of Economics.[6]



The London School of Economics disputes that Mitra is an alumnus of the University, as questionmarks surfaced over various other claims of Mitra's biography in March 2017. Various of Mitra's claims over his involvement in womeninfoline.com are disputed and stand in contrast to claims by the former Chairman of the company who claims Mitra was not associated with the company. No stock exchange documents verify any connection of Mitra to the company's IPO. [7]

Career

Following his graduation, Mitra continued his entrepreneurship by co-founding and working [8] at several startups,[6] including U.K. insurance provider Swiftcover where he served as Head of Innovation,[8] as well as a mobile social network called "Stuck".[9] In 2007, Swiftcover was acquired by AXA Insurance.[10] While working for AXA Insurance, Mitra worked with Omar Tayeb, and the two were inspired to create Blippar in 2011 after sharing a joke in a pub about imagining the Queen of England coming to life from a £20 note.[5]

Today, Mitra serves as CEO of Blippar.[1] Under Mitra's leadership, Blippar has won several technology and innovation awards, including being ranked #19 on CNBC's 2015 Top Disruptor list,[11] ranked #9 on CNBC's 2016 Top Disruptor list in 2016 [12] and in January 2016, Blippar was named on Bloomberg's list of top UK Business Innovators and recognized by Business Insider as one of the most innovative companies.[13][14]

Mitra was one of the early investors in Magic Pony, which sold to Twitter for $150m in June 2016.[15] Mitra is also a lead investor in Global Gene Corp, a company looking at addressing the ethnic bias of genetic research and developing medecine based on genetic data.[16]

Honours and awards

In February 2016, Mitra was named as an ambassador for the British government's GREAT Britain campaign "to promote British innovation around the world."[17] In 2016 Ambarish received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the UK [18]

References

  1. 1 2 "Blippar Aims to Be the Future of Search Engines". wsj.com. 11 July 2014.
  2. ↑ "Blippar CEO named UK Entrepreneur Of The Year". EY.com. 4 October 2016.
  3. 1 2 "A Year In A Delhi Slum". FastCompany. 31 July 2015.
  4. ↑ "How one CEO went from a teenage runaway living in an Indian slum to founding a billion-dollar company". Business Insider. 18 August 2015.
  5. 1 2 "Growth capital: A blip on every screen: that's the aim of ‘real-world browser’ Blippar". London Evening Standard. 29 September 2014.
  6. 1 2 "The $1bn unicorns – The Sunday Times". thesundaytimes.co.uk. 29 March 2015.
  7. ↑ "The Myth and Reality of Startup Slumdog Millionaire Ambarish Mitra". ftalphaville.ft.com. 16 March 2017.
  8. 1 2 "PSTF: Swiftcover brand boosted by non-insurance Iphone app". Post.
  9. ↑ "Ambarish Mitra: From runaway teen to tech genius and entrepreneur". DNA India. 2 August 2015.
  10. ↑ "Former Swiftcover exec Reames departs Axa". Post.
  11. ↑ "Meet the 2015 CNBC Disruptor 50 companies". CNBC. 12 May 2015.
  12. ↑ CNBC,"Meet the 2016 CNBC Disruptor 50 companies"., 7 June 2016, Retrieved 22 August 2016.
  13. ↑ "Blippar – Bloomberg Business Innovators". Retrieved 26 February 2016.
  14. ↑ "The 21 most innovative startups in tech". Business Insider. Retrieved 26 February 2016.
  15. ↑ "Twitter Is Buying Magic Pony Technology Which Uses Neural Networks To Improve Images". TechCrunch. 20 June 2016.
  16. ↑ "Slumdog tech boss backs gene start-up". Sunday Times. 5 February 2017.
  17. ↑ "Blippar tech pioneer to showcase British innovation around the world". London Evening Standard. 5 February 2016.
  18. ↑ "Augmented reality startup's Ambarish Mitra crowned UK entrepreneur of the year by EY". City AM. 4 October 2016.
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