AI startup Mad Street Den raises Series-A funding from Sequoia India and others
AI startup Mad Street Den has raised its Series-A from Sequoia India and existing investors including Exfinity Ventures and growX Ventures.
With the infused capital, the startup plans to expand into the global market and also build its core computer vision platform.
Also, this funding will enable the company to innovate in three key areas. The first of these is a visual intelligence-based personalisation platform which will understand style ​preferences, thereby increasing the lifestyle industry’s ability to grow customer relationships in the digital world. The second is bringing physical and digital experiences together​. The last key area is building retailer tools to accurately measure and predict cu ​stomer behaviour, automate visual merchandising, inventory management, and reduce customer returns.
Launched at MobileSparks 2013 by husband-wife duo Anand Chandrasekaran and Ashwini, Mad Street Den was first based out of Chennai, but now has a physical presence across the US, Europe, and India with employees who are a mix of neuroscientists, data scientists, computer vision experts, marketers, and designers.
The company had raised Rs 9 crore from Reservoir Investments’ Exfinity Fund and growX ventures last year.
The company’s first vertical, Vue.ai, serves retailers across the globe, using artificial intelligence to provide the personal stylist or shopper that shows consumers the products and styles relevant for them across an entire app, site, or store in multiple formats.
“The core of everything we do is built around neuromorphic principles. The real power of AI will be unlocked when it learns organically, with minimal data. Our image tagging application is an example of how we’ve bootstrapped a learning system with very minimal data or training sets, focusing on its evolution through customer interaction,” said Anand Chandrasekaran, Founder, Neuroscientist, and CTO at Mad Street Den.
AI market
Mad Street Den’s goal is to bring computer vision to every device, from high-end displays to low-end smartphones, using its cloud-based machine learning-platform.
Mad Street Den was one of the few startups to foray into the AI segment . In the recent past, however, the segment has gained a lot of momentum. Earlier this year, Ratan Tata made his first investment in AI and backed Niki.ai. AI-based visual and image search platform Snapshopr raised an undisclosed amount of funding this year.
Intel also acquired California-based deep learning startup Nervana Systems which was run by an Indian-origin entrepreneur.
According to IDC research, the AI analytics research industry will grow to $70 billion by 2020 from just $8.2 billion in 2013.
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