Singapore AI start-up raises $20m

Several existing backers also took part, including Rakuten Ventures, WI Harper, Singapore Press Holdings Ventures, Raffles Venture Partners, Enspire Capital, and UOB Venture Management. New investors include Tembusu ICT Fund, Impossible Ventures, and a joint venture between Mitsui Fudosan and Global Brain known as 31 Ventures.

It brings the company’s total funding to date to $34.5 million following a $10.5 million Series B raised in 2016 that also featured Phillip Private Equity and FengHE Fund Management, a firm founded by Alibaba Group's ex-CTO John Wu. ViSenze will use the fresh capital to increase adoption of its technology among smartphone manufacturers and enhance existing services.

Founded in 2012, the company offers image recognition technology that facilitates e-commerce by making online products more easily searchable. This is achieved through automated tagging and positioning advertising visuals with respect to product features such as style, color, patterns, and context of use. The technology is used for visual trend analytics, social insights, price discovery, and competitive strategizing.

This discipline, sometimes called “visual commerce,” is expected to grow in importance as consumers become increasingly mobile-centric. ViSenze plans to scale its business by helping clients including Rakuten, Urban Outfitters, and Zalora to capture this group of consumers through new services. The idea is to adapt e-commerce concepts such as image-based browsing and personalized product recommendations to new shopping behavior patterns.

“With more retailers and brands offering visual search capabilities as an option for consumers to accelerate the time to purchase and improve the buying experience, we see the technology continuing to shape the future of retail,” said Eduardo Piedade, CEO at Sonae IM. “Hence, after having thoroughly analyzed this space, we were able to invest in the leading player, which will enable us to take part in this modern shopping era that is heavily driven by visual inspiration.”

According to a statement, ViSenze has achieved an annual revenue growth rate of more than 200%, as well as a tripling of its employee headcount tripling during the past three years. More than 300 million shoppers use ViSenze and over three million image search queries are made per day using the company’s technology. The ViSenze platform is linked to some 400 million products through 800 retailers globally. Smart phone manufacturing partners include Samsung, LG, and Huawei.

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Expansion
• Consumer
• Technology
• Singapore
• Gobi Partners
• Rakuten
• WI Harper Group
• UOB Venture Management
• Tembusu Partners
• Global Brain Corporation
• TMT
• artificial intelligence