IAN Invests In AI Based Research Startup Staqu

Indian Angel Network (IAN) has invested an undisclosed amount in Gurgaon-based Staqu, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) focused research startup working in automated image understanding technology.

Bikky Khosla, Neeraj Singal and Ajay Gupta led the round on behalf of IAN. With this, Bikky Khosla will join the Staqu board.

Founded in 2015 by Atul Rai, Anurag Saini, Chaitan Rexwal, Pankaj Sharma, Staqu, enables automation of some of the crucial tasks for ecommerce companies which include image search, tag generation, real time recommendation. The solutions include the VGrep API Suite that comprises of products such as visual search engine and hybrid recommendation engine.

The startup will use the newly raised funding to further build and democratise technology and strengthen the team.

Atul Rai, co-founder and CEO said, “We plan to invest this round to expand the computational strength of our VGrep Lab (AI research lab at Staqu) and fuel it with clusters of GPUs and other technical resources. Currently, we are applying our research to solve pressing problems in the ecommerce sector. In the near future, we are planning on use it to address issues across other market segments, too.”

Staqu’s key focus areas include image processing, deep learning, computer vision, NLP, and overall improvement of users’ daily mobile experience through AI and engineering.

Recently, the team developed a bidirectional image understanding technology i.e. automated image to text and text to image discovery. It’s a combination of various reinforcement-based deep learning algorithms which require only images to learn and develop their own understanding. This research is a huge step towards understanding and extracting information from images that will smoothen the traditional search tasks.

Bikky Khosla, of IAN said, “Search is becoming very complex and consumer experience demands precise results of articles being searched. Staqu AI engine is the best that we have seen and can help increase the sales of its ecommerce customers by delivering superior customer experience. It can also create alternate revenue streams for its OEM customers.”

The Indian Angel Network has close to 400 investors from 10 countries, IAN’s presence spans 7 locations, which includes cities in India and UK. IAN has invested in startups from diverse industries/sectors. IAN has invested in over 55 ventures over the last two years. IAN’s portfolio, with over 100-odd companies, spans 17 sectors across 7 countries. Prior to this, Noida-based SmartVizX, a virtual reality solutions startup, raised over $500K from the Indian Angel Network (IAN) and Stanford Angels & Entrepreneurs India (SA&E India).

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