IIM-A kid start-up wWhere raises Rs 1.2 cr funding

The Ahmedabad-based location start-up, wWhere, has raised Rs 1.2 crore from international investors, strengthening its potential to go global.

Advanced location-based app wWhere, incubated at the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), has received this funding commitment from a consortium of high-profile angel investors from across the U.S., India and Singapore.

The app, wWhere, aims to solve the perennial problem of location sharing with advanced algorithms and a very simple front-end, its founder Ritam Bhatnagar said here on Wednesday.

"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 wallahs and 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’.”

Even before the launch, the product has generated a buzz with more than 6,500 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 2,600 signups in that short span of time. We are now working for a global launch, targeting countries in Asia, Australia and Europe," he added.

Anunay Gupta, representative of the lead investor in this deal and co-founder of Marketelligent, which was recently acquired by data giant Brillio, said, “The team at wWhere impressed us 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”.

Ashim Mehra, Vice President, Baron Capital, a New York-based venture finance firm and one of the investors, said with location-related awareness being on a constant rise, the addressable market for this product is large.

An incubatee company of CIIE, wWhere received support in terms of resources and networks. Khushalee Vakil, Senior Manager, Angel Affiliations, CIIE, said the Centre was quick to incubate wWhere as the product has a lot of potential and addresses a continual problem with features like Groups and Auto-Locate.

wWhere, a team of nine, incorporated in 2013, has been working to make locations simplified. Using advanced algorithms, the startup has been working towards re-defining macro-locations, thereby making locations more personified. Two versions of the product-a mobile app and a web-app, can both be accessed over any smartphone with data connection.

CIIE is the technology business incubator at the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), that aims to help the country's budding entrepreneurs set up innovative, disruptive and scalable ventures through mentoring, incubation, advising and funding initiatives.

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