Visual AI startup Snapshopr raises angel funding

Snapshopr, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup that specialises in visual search and image recognition, has secured an undisclosed amount in angel funding led by former Flipkart CTO Amod Malviya.

Apurva Dalal (CTO, Urban Ladder), Pallav Nadhani (co-founder, FusionCharts), Saran Chatterjee (CEO, Housejoy), Sameer Nigam (former engineering head, Flipkart), Sanat Rao (partner, iSPIRT) and Bragadish Sureshkumar (VP-engineering, Zopper) also put in money in this round.

Snapshopr, run by Bangalore-based Aincubate Innovations Pvt Ltd, will use the funding raised to build its visual intelligence platform for online retailers.

"Solving image search and analytics with deep learning is a complex computer science area which is ripe for innovation and has a number of very interesting applications in e-commerce. I found the IP, tech team talent and disruption potential of Snapshopr's approach to be quite unique," said Dalal.

Founded in September 2014 by Navneet Sharma, Debashish Pattnaik and Vivek Gandhi, Snapshopr aims to solve search and discovery related problems by providing its visual technology platform as a SaaS solution to the partner retailers. The platform makes searching in online catalogues easier with its image search options.

SnapShopr App was also awarded the Best App Runner-up award at Google App Expo 2015. It has also been one of the regional winners at the IBM GEP Smart Camp India 2015.

There are a few Indian startups in the artificial intelligence space that are gaining attention. Most recently, Mumbai-based AI startup Arya.ai raised $750,000 (around Rs 5 crore) in pre-Series A round of funding from YourNest Angel Fund and VentureNursery members. In-fact, Arya.ai was the first Indian startup to be selected by Paris&Co, a French innovation agency, as one of 21 companies globally that do standout innovations.

Another startup named Niki.ai, in October 2015, got the backing of Ronnie Screwvala's Unilazer Ventures. The startup is building a product named Niki, a bot that lets users order anything through a chat interface.

In August last year, Samsung and Wipro Ventures invested under $20 million in US-based Vicarious, a robotics startup that enables computers to achieve human-level intelligence. The Silicon Valley-based Vicarious was founded by India-born entrepreneur and researcher Dileep George along with Phoenix in 2010.

Also, data analytics and AI startup Retention.ai was snapped up by mobile news curator Inshorts in October 2015. The technology will be used to strengthen Inshorts' customer retention efforts.