Ambarish Mitra's working life started two decades ago in a Delhi slum, after he ran away from his home as a teenager. Now he is building a technology business, set up in London in 2011, that has ambitions eventually to rival Facebook and Google. He is the Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Blippar, a tech company, growing rapidly, specialising in augmented reality, artificial intelligence and computer vision. He was named ‘EY Entrepreneur Of The Year UK 2016 overall winner’ at a ceremony in London on Monday night.
Blippar's free app turns a smartphone camera into a tool that scans, recognises and identifies everyday objects and brings up online information about them on the screen.
While working two jobs, as a door-to-door salesman by day and at a tea stall by night, Mitra won a nationwide business plan competition. The prize money funded the launch of his first business, Women Infoline, which gave free internet access to women earning below a certain wage.
At 21 Mitra sold the business and moved to the UK, where he started three business ventures over the next ten years. His ‘lightbulb moment’ happened in a pub, after sharing a joke with Blippar’s co-founder, Omar Tayeb, about the Queen coming to life out of a £20 note. A few days later a prototype was created and Blippar was born. The company now has twelve offices across the globe, including London, New York, San Francisco, Delhi and Singapore, with plans to expand.
Blippar harnesses image recognition, augmented reality and computer vision technology to bring the physical world to life through smart and wearable devices. Once they have downloaded the app, consumers can blipp (‘scan’) objects they are curious about and unlock content. The app has over 65 million users in 175 countries.
The judges described Mitra as “a man with big vision and a driving ambition, but also one that is matched by his social conscience, driven at least in part by his own early life experiences”.
Stuart Watson, UK Entrepreneur Of The Year Programme Leader said: “Ambarish wowed the judges with his technology and his entrepreneurial spirit. This is an entrepreneur with an unwavering determination to succeed, who sees each triumph and failure as feedback to help drive the business forward. They were also impressed by his personal journey from teenage runaway in New Delhi, to a CEO of a fast-growth, high-tech multi-national, transforming interactions with consumers.”
Mitra has entered the awards programme three times in the last three years and will now go on to represent the UK at EY’s World Entrepreneur Of The Year in Monaco next June, competing with more than 50 other country winners for the global title.
An independent judging panel chaired by Rosemary Squire OBE, Founder Director and Deputy Chairman, Ambassador Theatre Group and EY Entrepreneur Of The Year UK 2014 overall winner, selected the winners from 40 UK finalists, who have combined revenue of £2.4bn and employ a workforce of over 16,000.
