Startup Street: ABP Group’s Aritra Sarkar Tries Hand At Entrepreneurship
Anandabazar Patrika Group's Aritra Sarkar is the latest to join the league of new-age entrepreneurs.
Take a look at Sarkar's new social commerce venture, how a hyped drone startup failed to take off and what's the latest in the tech education space -- all on Startup Street.
Aritra Sarkar's New Venture
Aritra Sarkar, nephew of ABP Group Vice-Chairman Aveek Sarkar, is looking to provide a technology-based platform that makes life more "meaningful".
Wedoria Technologies' main product is an interactive social website called MeVero, which runs discussions and group forums, and supports communities in its beta phase. But MeVero doesn't limit itself to philosophical chats. The site also allows users to buy and sell goods and services that they create or own. MeVero will take a commission on each transaction.
"It is a virtual world that enables people to discover their real purpose in life. It is a digital platform that fosters creation, collaboration, relationships and commerce within a trust-rich environment," said Sarkar in an email interaction with BloombergQuint.
Apart from group forums, the site also showcases upcoming festivals and seminars in Kolkata. "Although the platform is headquartered in Kolkata at the moment, it's global in scope and ambition," Sarkar's LinkedIn profile reads.
Ananda Offset Pvt. Ltd., a "significant printing partner" to the ABP group, has invested in the startup, Sarkar said.
Sarkar plans to raise a round of seed funding soon to take the startup's traffic from 3,000 users -- in the first phase of its testing -- to a completely built product that can hold more than a million users.
Fund Crunch Forces Drone Startup To Shut Shop
Lily, a startup for camera drones that got pre-orders worth $34 million, is shutting down.
"We are planning to wind down the company and offer refunds to customers," co-founders Antoine Balaresque and Henry Bradlow wrote in a blog on the company's wibsite on January 12, 2017.
We have been racing against a clock of ever-diminishing funds. Over the past few months, we have tried to secure financing in order to unlock our manufacturing line and ship our first units – but have been unable to do this.Antoine Balaresque and Henry Bradlow, Founders, Lily
The company will offer refunds to its pre-order customers over the next 60 days. The money will be reversed to the cards used for payments, and requires no action from the customer.
The startup had received many a tough-worded tweets, with customers wondering when they would get the $499 product. As of December 19, the company was still reassuring its customers.
Currently, we are still finalizing our international shipping timeline which we will be releasing when available.@NigelMatchett
December 19, 2016The orders, of course, never showed up.
Hasura Organises IMAD 2.O
Six-month-old application development startup Hasura is ready for the second iteration of its online course IMAD (Introduction to Modern Application Development). The course, being jointly offered by Hasura and the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, will begin on January 23, 2017, the startup said in a media statement.
“IMAD aims to inspire technology entrepreneurship capabilities in the youth so that they can develop solutions for both local and global problems.”The first edition of IMAD got more than 57,000 applications, with well-known startups such as Swiggy and established companies like Mastercard collaborating for the course.
The startup has built an interface where users can build their own apps in a much simpler way.
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