Indian artist in New York raises $2 million for his social media venture

MUMBAI: A venture founded by an Indian in New York to build a new kind of social network hasattracted $2 million in angel funding even before its launch. Flipsicle, which started as a project by artist Raghava KK, has been backed by 10-12 investors, including Neeraj Arora of Whatsapp, Vishal Gondal, founder and CEO of technology and fitness firm, GoQii, and Kleiner Perkins’ design partner John Maeda.

The venture wants to build a social network that brings together different perspectives on a varietyof subjects. It does that by allowing users to ask questions and respond to them with pictures.

The idea for the venture came from an iPad app Raghava developed for children in 2011, which showed a different perspectives on the same theme when it was shaken — in one instance, it showed a gay couple raising a child, and in the next, a hetrosexual couple raising a child.

Raghava, who initially planned to fund the venture himself or run it as not-for-profit project, decided it would scale a lot faster and have many more users if he built as a company.

“This is a new form of knowing. Right now, our knowledge and social graph doesn’t incorporate perspectives,” says the Bangalore-born artist .

Flipscle, which went live last week, is available as an app for Android and iOS platforms. The venture is co-founded by his wife, Netra,who isCOOof the firm.

Gondal, who wrote the first cheque for the venture, says he backed the firmbecausehesawit asa breakthroughidea.