Staqu Technologies, an artificial intelligence focussed start-up providing automated image technologies, plans to raise between $1.5 million and $3 million this year to scale up its portfolio and to rope in more customers, said co-founder and CEO Atul Rai. “Government (intelligence) agencies are a major customer,” Mr. Rai said on Thursday in a telephone interview from Gurugram, where the company is headquartered. “We are in talks with various investors and hope to close the round this year itself.”
Robotic automation
India ranks among the top three nations in the world implementing robotic automation in their core business processes, according to a recent global survey conducted by U.K. based professional body Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), across select European, African and Asian countries. More than two-thirds (64%) of finance professionals from India encourage increasing automation as it saves time, money and helps ease the indecision process in their organisations, according to the study. The growth of the artificial intelligence market is driven by the development of IT infrastructure and the penetration of smartphones and smart wearables in countries such as India, it stated.
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Staqu Technologies had raised ₹500 crore in seed funding from Indian Angel Network in June 2016, Mr. Rai said. “We are operating in three domains — mobile, e-commerce and government agencies such as police. The government is a major customer, especially the police departments.” The company, founded in 2015, had finished a pilot project with Alwar police by developing an app for officers called ABHED (artificial intelligence based human efface detection) to set up criminal identity registration, tracking, missing person’s search and crime scene fingerprint matching. It is also working with the Punjab police. “We have solved about 30 cases in Punjab through our technology.” “Two other state governments, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, have contacted us to set up the same. We plan to be a pan-India player,” Mr. Rai said. “We are in need of funds to set up the app in these States. Our technology can also be extended to sectors such as apparel and business to consumer, where security plays a vital role like in households, hotel and schools.”
The firm’s focus areas include image processing, deep learning, computer vision and overall improvement of users’ mobile experience through a combination AI and engineering. “Our products are 10-20 times cheaper than products from say Japan or Israel. We have the advantage of making products to suit the local needs,” Mr. Rai said.
Funds were also needed to file the company’s patents in the U.S., Mr. Rai said.
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“Staqu has three patents in India.” The firm’s customers include Karbonn, Panasonic, Paytm, Vistaprint, Zenmobile, among others.
“As far as competition in India is concerned there are other AI start-ups which are into chatbots. Staqu does not belong there. Google is generic and our app, based on data analytics and imaging are quite different.,” Mr. Rai said.
Total investments in AI were between $26 billion to $39 billion in 2016, with external investment tripling since 2013, according to a study conducted in August by Harvard Business Review. Despite this level of investment, however, AI adoption is in its infancy. “For the moment, this is good news for those companies still experimenting or piloting AI,” according to the study.