The startup scene in India has been blowing up over the last decade with a lot of very successful startups. Especially in eCommerce, customer service, and ride-sharing space. But little has been said about the work going on in the AI space. Although the goal is to have more than 50% of retailers working on AI, the Indian government recently identified that the country’s efforts were lagging behind China & the US. So, to promote further innovation in the AI space, the government has established a preliminary framework. A budget will follow with the hope that more entrepreneurs would pursue ideas in the field of AI.
A recent analysis done by Accenture shows the potential to add $957 billion to our economy by the year 2035. Keeping this in mind, we decided to look at some of the most innovative Indian startups trying to make a dent in the global AI space.
Here are some of the top startups we identified. This list is by no means exhaustive, but rather a small snapshot of the work being done in this space in various industries in India.
1. SigTuple
Industry: Medicine
Founders: Tathagato Rai Dastidar, Apurv Anand, Rohit Kumar Pandey
Founded: 2015
SigTuple started out with the goal of providing medical diagnostic solutions for people in places where such facilities are hard to find. They claim that over 100 million people reside in areas detached from access to well-resourced medical centers.
SigTuple boasts a fast turnaround time on the analysis of patient samples (around 5 mins). They use AI algorithms to analyze, review and report back to the patient in cases where this would have taken a few days or weeks. This has allowed SigTuple to coordinate medical resources without having to wait for patients to arrive at a hospital.
Another innovative concept that SigTuple has implemented is an automated microscope that carries out the tasks of a pathologist while running it’s very own diagnostics lab.
2. Haptik
Industry: Customer Service
Founders: Aakrit Vaish, Swapan Rajdev
Founded: 2013
The world has seen a trend moving away from CSRs manually handling requests and moving towards automated chatbots. This Mumbai based startup was featured in the article “7 AI Chatbot Startups Giving Technology a Voice” and gives you the ability to build your own AI-powered chatbot. They even allow customization by industry and the ability to have a hybrid model (Human-AI mix).
3. Crayon Data
Industry: Banking, Travel & Retail
Founders: Suresh Shankar, Srikant Sastri, Vijaya Kumar Ivaturi
Founded: 2012
Crayon Data is a big data, and AI startup based out of Singapore and Chennai. With an ambitious vision to ‘simplify the world’s choices’, Crayon’s flagship product Maya™ is the world’s only choice engine, delivering digital personal experiences centered around taste. The platform enables enterprises to link their internal data to Crayon’s Tastegraph™ to create personalized TastePrints for each of their millions of customers. It is also working on a first of its kind, taste-based recommendation system for the banking sector.
4. Charmboard
Industry: Advertising & Marketing
Founders: GBS Bindra
Founded: 2014
This Bangalore based startup developed a video tagging algorithm, inspired by the visual layout of Pinterest. This intuitive application is able to tag or bookmark visuals that appear on the screen and identifies them using computer vision. Charmboard suggests apparel and accessories similar to the visuals you tag and even directs you to online stores where you could buy the items that are tagged in these visuals.
Charmboard is one of a kind startup in its space and is creating a lot of buzz in the advertising and marketing industry with a growing customer base. They raised $5million in their Series A funding round in 2017.
5. Niki.ai
Industry: eCommerce
Founders: Shishir Modi, Nitin Babel, Sachin Jaiswal, Keshav Prawasi
Founded: 2015
In the last year, Niki.ai grew 430% in annual revenues. How did they pull this off? Their chatbot understands human conversations and integrates advanced AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Niki.ai understands conversations in the context of products and services the customer is interested in and guides them accordingly.
This eCommerce startup is aiming to build out a conversational chatbot that is able to speak to customers and understand their request for products and services.
6. Embibe
Industry: Education Technology
Founders: Aditi Avasthi
Founded: 2012
There have been few startups that have delved into the education technology space. But Embibe has taken it upon itself to use technology to improve the lives of teachers and students. Embibe uses advanced analytics to personalize the way a student learns. It alters the students learning outcomes based on an in-depth analysis of the students learning ability while taking into consideration speed, accuracy, confidence and other parameters that help it tailor the learning experience to each individual student.
Its algorithm has been compared to that of IBM’s Watson. The startup recently claimed that they have over 60 educational institutions using their platform.
7. Boxx.ai
Industry: eCommerce
Founders: Prakhar Raj, Shitiz Bansal, and Ajay Kashyap
Founded: 2016
Boxx.ai democratizes analytics. They utilize AI to predict the buying behavior of each customer. Using this information it is able to personalize a customer’s experience through a number of different marketing channels.
AIDA is Boxx.ai’s first product. Its proprietary algorithms predict what each customer is likely to buy in the future. It then delivers personalized customer experiences across all marketing channels (emails, app notifications, browser notifications, Facebook, and on the website or app) based on these predictions. Thereby increasing engagement, transactions and ultimately revenue of the enterprise.
