Chinese giant APUS acquires Jaipur-based Siftr Labs

APUS Group, China’s fastest growing Unicorn with over 510 million global users, has acquired photo-curation platform Siftr Labs, for an undisclosed amount, in a cash and equity deal.

The acquisition will help Siftr grow vertically by tapping into the extensive global experience of the Chinese Android developing and information service giant.

Incepted in Jaipur in 2015 by Romil Mittal and Mayank Bhagya, both veterans from Adobe, Qualcomm, and Samsung with significant expertise in machine learning, image processing, and mobile development, Siftr Labs is a tech-driven photo-curation platform. By leveraging deep learning, it has developed a proprietary Computer Vision Engine that can perform multiple ground-breaking tasks, including object identification, facial recognition, age and gender detection, as well as perceiving photo genres with an unrivaled precision.

The platform had also developed an innovative mobile application, ‘Siftr Magic’, which enables its users to delete junk and irrelevant photos on their devices.

With the acquisition, seed investment and innovation platform Venture Catalysts - which had invested $150,000 (Rs 1 crore in Siftr Labs last year, was also able to make a successful exit. Romil Mittal, Co-founder and CEO, Siftr Labs, said, “Our team has always been passionate about building innovative tech products with the potential to impact and enhance people’s lives. Our global elevation has given us an opportunity to keep doing the same on a much larger scale and at a faster pace. We would like to thank APUS Group for identifying our potential as well as to the entire team at Venture Catalysts, without whose valuable contributions this could not have been possible.”

Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder, Venture Catalysts, said, “This deal has also hinted towards continued interest of global players in building their arsenal of machine learning technologies, and has marked the beginning of sustained Chinese tech acquisitions on Indian soil.”

APUS, on the other hand, had created an India-specific fund of Rs 300 crore to pump into mobile-based startups here.