Ambarish Mitra

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. Ambarish was named UK Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young in 2016

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. He moved into a slum in Delhi where he worked selling magazines door-to-door by day, and in a tea stall by night. 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. After taking the company public with a successful IPO, Mitra relocated to the United Kingdom to continue his education, earning a master's degree from the London School of Economics.

Following his graduation, Mitra continued his entrepreneurship by co-founding several startups, including U.K. insurance provider Swiftcover where he served as Head of Innovation, as well as a mobile social network called "Stuck". In 2007, Swiftcover was acquired by AXA Insurance. While working for AXA Insurance, Mitra met 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.

Today, Mitra serves as CEO of Blippar. Under Mitra's leadership, Blippar has won several technology and innovation awards, including being ranked #19 on CNBC's 2015 Top Disruptor list, ranked #9 on CNBC's 2016 Top Disruptor list in 2016and 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. In February 2016, Mitra was named as an ambassador for the British government's GREAT Britain campaign "to promote British innovation around the world."

Mitra was one of the early investors in Magic Pony, which sold to Twitter for $150m in June 2016.

In 2016 Ambarish received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the UK