Flipkart now has image-based search, and Singaporean startup Visenze is behind it
India’s largest online retailer Flipkart has added an image search feature to its mobile app, courtesy of Singaporean startup Visenze, the two companies announced today. Visenze’s technology allows users to upload an image of a product they are looking for and receive what the algorithm believes are relevant findings.
This enables customers to forego typing things in a search box for the convenience and ease of reference of a picture. Trying to formulate an accurate description in words to get exactly what you’re looking for can be tricky – especially if the user doesn’t have a good command of the language. A picture is worth a thousand words, after all, and that’s a few too many for your average search engine.
Visenze shouldn’t have had too much trouble convincing Flipkart about its value. The startup partnered successfully with ecommerce marketplace Rakuten Taiwan two years ago. Other partnerships include online store Zalora and fashion marketplace and social network Clozette. The Rakuten connection proved especially fruitful for Visenze, lending it more traction and also bringing in US$3.5 million in a series A investment round led by Rakuten Ventures last year (Disclosure: Walden International, one of the investors who participated in that round, is also an investor in Tech in Asia. See our ethics page for details).
“Our partnerships with Rakuten Taiwan and Zalora had of course helped us generate more leads that resulted in other clients like [fashion marketplace] Reebonz, [interior decoration company] Goodrich Global, etc,” Oliver Tan, co-founder and CEO of Visenze, tells Tech in Asia. Tan reveals that the overall volume of customer-provided images the company processes on a daily basis has increased ten-fold in the past 12 months, and the company expects that number to increase significantly after this latest deal.
Visenze, a startup that spun off Next, an R&D center jointly established by the National University of Singapore (NUS) and China’s Tsinghua University, started with ecommerce use cases on its image recognition technology.
But while it is optimized for online shopping, the startup’s visual tech can be used for other applications as well, according to Tan. “We have customers using our [technology] for mobile visual search on productivity apps, content database management, and private library management. Our aim is to simplify the booming visual web, and that goes into quite a few verticals.”
The startup plans to open a North America office this year, according to Tan. “We want to offer our customers not only our technology, but a full partnership, and we want to be close to them,” he says. “We are a global company and we put no geographical limitations to our expansion.”
Flipkart has been seeking acquisitions and partnerships that go beyond simply adding new products in its marketplace. In March, it bought mobile ad network Adiquity, and told Tech in Asia at the time that it would focus on more mergers and acquisitions this year.
Visenze’s technology will allow Flipkart to implement a feature that Amazon has had for a while on mobile with its Flow app. As Flipkart prepares to transition to a mobile app-only regime, the addition of an image recognition component could also spice up its offering for customers.
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