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The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A)'s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) incubated location start-up wWhere has raised Rs 1.2 crore worth funding from a consortium of high-profile angel investors across US, India and Singapore.
The funding commitment of Rs 1.2 crore will help the Ahmedabad based advanced location-based startup wWhere in solving location sharing problems through advanced algorithms as part of its app. According to Anunay Gupta, representative of the Lead Investor in the deal and co-founder of Marketelligent, which was recently acquired by data giant Brillio, the team at wWhere impressed investors with their creativity, enthusiasm and business acumen. "Given that consumers and businesses will increasingly tap into geo-location services in the future, Ritam and team are working in the right direction, ahead of time," Gupta added.
Incorporated in 2013, wWhere today has a team of nine working with an aim to make locations simplified in our otherwise strenuous lifestyle. Using advanced algorithms, the startup has been working towards re-defining macro-locations, thereby making locations more personified.
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According to Ritam Bhatngar, founder, wWhere, two versions of the product-a mobile app and a web-app, can both be accessed over any smartphone with data connection.
"In the world of smartphones, we are still stuck with the conventional method of sharing or finding locations using street names, closest landmarks or better still, asking auto wallahsand pedestrians for directions. We come in to replace the "Where are you?" texts, which amount to a majority of total text messages sent by smartphone users across the globe. wWhere enables people and businesses to locate each other effortlessly by being 'Uber for everything', said Bhatnagar.
Even before the launch, the product has already generated more than 6500 signups across 11 countries. To test the working model of the app, wWhere started with a live beta model for a limited window download. "It was a private beta for 12 hours in September, and we saw over 500 downloads and 2600 signups in that short span of time. We are now working for a global launch, targeting countries in Asia, Australia and Europe," Bhatnagar added.
As per Ashim Mehra, VP at Baron Capital, a venture finance firm based in New York, and one of the investors in wWhere, with location related awareness being on a constant rise, the addressable market for the product will be large. "In what might seem like a crowded space, the team has spent and continues to spend a lot of time working through real-world use cases that would differentiate the end-product," Mehra added.
Being incubated at CIIE, wWhere has also had access to the former's resources and networks. "We found an entrepreneur with the prior experience of running a startup, working on a scalable solution that provides a fast and easy way of location sharing. We were quick to incubate wWhere, as we believe the product has a lot of potential and addresses a continual problem with features like Groups and Auto-Locate," said Khushalee Vakil, Sr. Manager - Angel Affiliations at CIIE.
