Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Despite the recent accolades (he was Ernst & Young UK Entrepreneur of the Year for 2016, appointed as an Ambassador for the GREAT Britain campaign, which promotes British innovation around the world, and recognised as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2017), Ambarish Mitra, the co-founder and CEO of Blippar, that went into insolvency on Monday, was always a strange choice to give the opening address at #ISE2019 in Amsterdam on February 4, 2019.
Ambarish Mitra‘s false claim that he had attended the London School of Economics and his hard to believe, rags-to-riches tale (he was at one point labelled a real-life Slumdog Millionaire) should have set alarm bells ringing with any conference organiser. Blippar promised an awful lot but managed just GBP 57.5 million in sales for the past 12 months, while racking up losses of GBP 35m.
Many who had dealings with the founders of the company will know that they all seemed tremendously arrogant and entitled. Those that we dealt with, certainly did not have a very good understanding of many of the key verticals where #AR could have made good inroads (retail, advertising, OOH, even Television). Talking of arrogance, the company claim they turned down a USD 1.5 billion takeover back in 2014.
The Sunday Times wrote only this past weekend that, we quote “The technology start-up once hailed as a $1bn unicorn is now close to failing”. Less than 24 hours later and the Sunday Times was proved spot-on.
Blippar raised well over USD 150M from investors which included property developer Nick Candy, Landsdowne Partners and Qualcomm. Corporate insolvency firm David Rubin & Partners has been appointed as Blippar’s administrators and unfortunately all the staff (estimates range from 75 – 120) have been let go.
We can only assume that the organisers at Integrated Systems Events are now frantically looking for a new speaker to give the opening address at #ISE2019 on Monday February 4, 2019.
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