Former Indiagames COO Samir Bangara joins Qyuki.com as MD and CEO

Samir Bangara, who was the managing director at Disney UTV Digital (after Disney took over UTV), has joined in AR Rahman and Shekhar Kapur's media startup Qyuki.com as MD and CEO. He is taking the helm from former CEO Poonacha Machaiah, an official statement said.

Qyuki is basically a platform for artists to share their creations and connect with like-minded people. Users can view, share and collaborate with creative people around them via Qyuki.

Medianama had first reported that Bangara would be joining the startup as its CEO. Previously, Gizmodo, said that Bangara has invested in the company, though there has been no confirmation of the same, yet.

We could not immediately ascertain if Bangara is investing fresh cash into the firm or will own a part of the firm by virtue of being roped in as CEO. It is common for startups and even mid-size firms to bring a professional CEO (at times as a co-founder) with a sweat equity.

Bangara quit weeks after media giant Walt Disney Company consolidated all its digital media properties across platforms and content under a new entity in India called Disney UTV Digital, which was co-headed by Bangara and Vishal Gondal. Prior to this, Bangara was COO at Indiagames. Gondal also recently quit  Disney.

Bangalore-based Qyuki Digital Media Pvt. Ltd. was founded in December 2012 and prior to this it raised an undisclosed amount of investment from Cisco.

The portal has four sections—Creations, Premier, Inspirations and Community. Its homepage looks a lot like Pinterest and users can view, tag and share different images posted. Upon clicking a particular image, the profile of the user, who posted the image, opens. Users can see all his/her posts, choose to follow him/her and rate as to what emotion the posts have evoked in them choosing from love, hope, joy, pride, anger, wonder, etc.

Qyuki was the brainchild of renowned musician AR Rahman and filmmaker and writer Shekhar Kapur.