Exclusive: GenAI Startup Ayna Bags Funding From Inflexor To Redefine Ecommerce Photoshoot

Bengaluru-based GenAI-powered product photography startup Ayna has raised $1.5 Mn (about INR 12.5 Cr) in its seed funding round, led by Inflexor Ventures. The round also saw participation from a few angel investors, including Jabong founder Praveen Sinha and Credgenics cofounder Mayank Khera.

The startup plans to use the funds to further expand its AI capabilities, scale its team, and accelerate its mission to make high-quality product photography accessible to businesses of all sizes.

Founded in 2023 by Aastha Rajpal and Yash Bansal, Ayna leverages its proprietary compound foundational models (CFMs) and diffusion models to provide ecommerce brands with studio-quality product photoshoots.

The startup counts apparel brands like Reliance Retail’s Clovia, WomanLikeU, and Bummer, and D2C furniture and mattress brand Wakefit among its clients. 

Ayna cofounder Rajpal told Inc42 that the platform can create and customise an entire virtual human model around the clothes or any product, eliminating the necessity of human models for photoshoots.

Its GenAI-based platform allows creation of virtual human models with multiple options across ethnicities such as American, Russian, Indian, and Indian sub-cultures such as Kashmiri, Bengali, and others. It also gives the options to choose different body types, gender, age, as well as eye and hair colours.

Once the virtual model is created, the brands can upload the reference photos of their products. Ayna then extracts the products out of the reference images and generates the photographs. Users can also choose the number of photos they require, the kind of lighting, mood, and background. 

Ayna’s Global Ambitions

Commenting on the technology behind Ayna’s offerings, Rajpal said, “We took stable diffusion and fine-tuned it to get photorealism, and then built intelligent layers on top of it to get outputs like these.” 

However, she said that this is just the beginning and the startup has more advanced GenAI-based offerings in the pipeline. 

“Right now we keep the garments constant and diffuse everything around it. After this, we will start diffusing the garments too, so that they can also be reconstructed from scratch and look like the brands’ original garments/products. We are building a compound foundational model for this,” Rajpal added. 

While Ayna started by helping apparel brands make product photography for ecommerce use cases more seamless and cost-effective with its GenAI capabilities, the startup is doubling down on other products and lifestyle photoshoots. The recent addition of Wakefit is a testament to that.

It is also eyeing global expansion, particularly in the fashion hubs of the world, like the US and the European countries. It is likely to enter the US market this year itself.

Meanwhile, Ayna is also looking to expand its customer base. So far, it catered to enterprises only. Now, the startup is creating a portal for long-tail customers where any user can enter and do photoshoots.

The startup is looking to grow its customer base to over 1,000 by the end of 2024 from 15 currently.

Speaking on the investment, Inflexor Ventures principal Murali Krishna Gunturu said that the VC firm is betting on the startup’s strong founding team, its technology, and the quality of output.

“Though this is going to be a crowded market and multiple players are already trying to solve the same problem, Ayna’s innovative technology, distribution capability, and impressive early achievements highlight the team’s potential,” Gunturu said. 

“Eventually, most ecommerce platforms will not do physical photoshoots and rely on artificially generated images. We are confident that Ayna will emerge as a leader in this AI-driven fashion and ecommerce solutions space, changing the face of both shopping and brands’ experiences,” he added.

Ayna currently competes with the likes of NeuroPixel.AI, AlphaBake, and ModelVerse. 

As per Inc42’s analysis, India’s GenAI market is expected to cross the $17 Bn mark by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 48%.