This husband-wife duo is tackling the misinformation problem with their AI-powered startup
In the age of information, misinformation rules. Cast your mind back to important world events like the US elections and Brexit, and you’ll recall how they have brought forth the problem of fake news, misinformation, or even misrepresentation of facts. This problem – abundant in the digital age - was something that husband-and-wife duo Ankur Pandey and Anushree Bishnoi wanted to solve for. And they ended up starting Mumbai-based UnFound News, an intelligent news insights app that aims to provide diverse perspectives to news and offer appropriate context.
“It took us time to understand fake news and various parts of it. We realised that it wasn’t just fabricated content; there’s also biased content, partial content, misrepresented facts…all of these fall under the gamut of fake news. That’s why we decided to build a platform that addressed all the above challenges,” Anushree says. Prior to starting Unfound News, Ankur and Anushree, had founded a logistics startup, SmartLoad, in 2015. However, as logistics is a capital-intensive business, they decided to shut shop and get back into the job market. In 2017, they started Unfound News. Currently bootstrapped, the platform took over six months to build the backend, tech, and AI engine.
The duo began their work with collecting a lot of data; they also worked on a few projects that helped them in data gathering. “We were a part of a consortium built to fight fake news in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh elections,” Anushree says.
The founders launched the consumer side of the app in March this year. The algorithms scan a large amount of content from various news sources. Over 10,000, articles are analysed per day. The platform then authenticates every news piece, breaks it down into context, and puts out multiple perspectives. Currently, Unfound News is made up of a team of 10.
The founders launched the consumer side of the app in March this year. The algorithms scan a large amount of content from various news sources. Over 10,000, articles are analysed per day. The platform then authenticates every news piece, breaks it down into context, and puts out multiple perspectives. Currently, Unfound News is made up of a team of 10.
Currently in its pre-revenue phase, Unfound News has over 40,000 total installs as of now. Their daily active users are over 3,000, the average number of opinions read per user per day is over 4.5, and the average session time is close to 13 minutes.
In the age of information, misinformation rules. Cast your mind back to important world events like the US elections and Brexit, and you’ll recall how they have brought forth the problem of fake news, misinformation, or even misrepresentation of facts. This problem – abundant in the digital age - was something that husband-and-wife duo Ankur Pandey and Anushree Bishnoi wanted to solve for. And they ended up starting Mumbai-based UnFound News, an intelligent news insights app that aims to provide diverse perspectives to news and offer appropriate context.
“It took us time to understand fake news and various parts of it. We realised that it wasn’t just fabricated content; there’s also biased content, partial content, misrepresented facts…all of these fall under the gamut of fake news. That’s why we decided to build a platform that addressed all the above challenges,” Anushree says. Prior to starting Unfound News, Ankur and Anushree, had founded a logistics startup, SmartLoad, in 2015. However, as logistics is a capital-intensive business, they decided to shut shop and get back into the job market. In 2017, they started Unfound News. Currently bootstrapped, the platform took over six months to build the backend, tech, and AI engine.
The duo began their work with collecting a lot of data; they also worked on a few projects that helped them in data gathering. “We were a part of a consortium built to fight fake news in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Chhattisgarh elections,” Anushree says.
The founders launched the consumer side of the app in March this year. The algorithms scan a large amount of content from various news sources. Over 10,000, articles are analysed per day. The platform then authenticates every news piece, breaks it down into context, and puts out multiple perspectives. Currently, Unfound News is made up of a team of 10.
The founders launched the consumer side of the app in March this year. The algorithms scan a large amount of content from various news sources. Over 10,000, articles are analysed per day. The platform then authenticates every news piece, breaks it down into context, and puts out multiple perspectives. Currently, Unfound News is made up of a team of 10.
Currently in its pre-revenue phase, Unfound News has over 40,000 total installs as of now. Their daily active users are over 3,000, the average number of opinions read per user per day is over 4.5, and the average session time is close to 13 minutes.
