Exclusive Interview with Sanjay Kumar, Co-Founder, and CEO, Spyne
Businesses that thrive on showcasing products on digital platforms know the importance and the challenges of having a picture-perfect photograph or neatly composed video of the product. It takes an entire team from photographer to lighting boy to editor to have that one click or bit of video which becomes insignia for the product. The huge market for photo editing tools that can process images right from the stage of the shoot was quickly recognized by Spyne. It came up with AI-enabled tools to make image processing a cakewalk. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Sanjay Kumar, Co-Founder, and CEO, of Spyne.
1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers.
Spyne is a Deep Tech startup helping businesses and marketplaces create and upgrade high-quality product images and videos at scale with AI. Creating good catalogs today is a manual, expensive, and time-taking process. As a result, less than 10% of the sellers today on eCommerce marketplaces create catalogs. Spyne is building the industry’s first AI-powered visual cataloging platform that enables businesses to create studio-finish images 500x faster, at 1/4th cost & at scale. You don’t need expensive studios or photography skills, nor have to follow any complex, time-consuming processes. With Spyne, one can create stunning catalogs within minutes, driving approximately 40% better conversions. Currently, we are serving 80+ customers including MFC, Volkswagen, Megadealers, Sell Any Car, Karvi, Amazon India, Flipkart, etc., across 15+ countries in the automotive, food, and retail verticals.
2. With what mission and objectives, the company was set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company?
Spyne was started four years back with the idea of revolutionizing the photography industry. Back then, we were solving for the content creation and distribution channel for photographers and digital creators. However, one year into the business, we understood that photographers and digital creators usually don’t have deep pockets, and therefore we saw the market to be a little limited.
Also, around this time, there were a lot of advancements happening in the AI and ML space. Given the e-commerce background that I come from (having worked with some of the best e-commerce players – OYO, Fashion and You, Amazon, and Yatra), we clearly saw the need to automate the catalog creation process with AI to make it more efficient and less time-consuming.
Our goal was to create an efficient version of product photography, which is both easy and scalable using AI and smartphones. We launched our first product in the automotive space in 2021, and since then there has been no looking back.
3. Brief us about the founders of the company and their contributions to the company and the industry.
Spyne was founded in 2018 by Deepti Prasad and me. Deepti Prasad is an economist turned entrepreneur. She is the Co-founder of Spyne and drives marketing, branding, and growth initiatives for the company. Being passionate about people and organization, she leads the employee happiness initiatives & is responsible for leading the company’s talent functions, building strong trust-based relationships across teams, and executive leadership. Prior to Spyne, Deepti started Eventila in 2015 which was a leading photographer discovery platform and wedding planning Blog in India.
I, being the Co-Founder and CEO, am leading the strategic goals of the company and constructing the company’s roadmap. I am also leading the product, tech, AI, and business teams. In the past, I have held leadership positions and led major initiatives at Amazon, Oyo, Fashion & You, Rocket Internet, and Yatra. Keeping customers and innovation at the heart of everything I have launched multiple successful products used by millions of customers globally.
4. What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from competitors?
We are enabling businesses to automate their entire cataloging process (shoot, edit, and publish) by replacing their traditional processes with cutting-edge AI technology. We standout in this area as our AI delivers accurate results and can help businesses infinitely scale, 500X faster at 1/4th the cost.
5. Kindly mention some of the major challenges the company has faced till now.
One of the earliest challenges we faced was how to train our AI models to give accurate outputs. To get near-studio image outputs with AI, we needed to solve multiple problems, each of which required focused resolution and data training.
For example, how do we bring out the best image output of a car if the car is not shot from the correct angle or if the light is too low when the car is shot in the evening post sunset. There were also issues of surrounding objects and trees showing through the see-through windows of the cars, reflections of buildings/ trees on a car’s body, etc.
All of these were real challenges and required focused training data that photographers needed solutions. Getting a huge volume of images for each of these specific issues was extremely difficult. Therefore, we set up a data annotation team, which helped us generate focused data for each of these problems from our ongoing client projects. This strategy helped us improvise and train our AI/ML models to make them more efficient and accurate over time. As a result, our models improved their outputs from about 60-70% accuracy at the beginning to 99%+ accuracy.
6. Please brief us about the products/solutions you provide to your customers and tell us how they get value out of it.
We are helping businesses and marketplaces create studio-finish product catalog images at scale with our industry-first, computer vision, and AI-powered solutions. Our products leverage deep learning to understand the visual intent far more quickly than humans.
Through our products such as Whitelabel apps and SDK solutions, we are reducing the 2+ weeks of catalog photography process to just a few minutes. This decreases the product’s time-to-market by 80% allowing them to scale faster and efficiently.
We also have a web tool, called Spyne Darkroom that helps AI validate & edit the existing images that sellers have and instantly convert them to high-quality images for better engagement & conversions. This solution is helpful for SMB businesses who have limited SKUs and wish to change their products’ look and feel for online selling.
Our AI Editing technology is built for scale, typically editing 500+ images per minute. Enterprise and marketplaces opt for API integrations to transform their catalog at scale at nearly 1/4th the cost.
7. How do you see the company and the industry in the future ahead?
Ecommerce cataloging is a huge $40 billion+ industry. Right now, we have enterprise first approach. We want to launch our product for B2B2C at least for specific categories (automotive, eCommerce, fashion, food) in the next year. Our long-term goal is to integrate our AI camera application via SDK integration with all the major marketplaces in India and abroad.
8. AI is projected to be the next market. How is AI contributing to the making of your products and services?
In AI, we are using computer vision to automate the entire photography, specifically the cataloging practice for eCommerce businesses. We are using AI for two specific use-cases that help generate marketplace-ready, studio-finish images in a few clicks. We are empowering anyone to shoot like a professional, from their smartphones and get marketplace-compliant images. The AI filter in our App guides you to capture the right images, for example, the AI filter turns red if you are using the phone at the wrong angle, or if you are standing too close/far from the product, if there is too less /bright light, etc. With AI camera filters, we are ensuring that everyone will capture the same type of images, irrespective of who is clicking them.
The second problem we are solving is how to convert these smartphone-shot images to match up to the studio-quality images for online selling. With AI, we are automating the entire manual editing process to replace and add backgrounds, autosize, colour correct, add shadows, etc., and get the final images within seconds.
9. What are your growth plans for the next 12 months?
Currently, Spyne caters majorly to enterprises and marketplaces. We have a major clientele in the automotive, eCommerce, and food industries. However, going ahead, we aim to soon launch our services for the B2B2C segment specifically for automotive dealerships, e-Commerce, and fashion businesses. Edging forward into the future, we have big plans to expand into Metaverse and Omniverse with the AR/VR technology that we are parallelly developing.
The post Exclusive Interview with Sanjay Kumar, Co-Founder, and CEO, Spyne appeared first on .
Businesses that thrive on showcasing products on digital platforms know the importance and the challenges of having a picture-perfect photograph or neatly composed video of the product. It takes an entire team from photographer to lighting boy to editor to have that one click or bit of video which becomes insignia for the product. The huge market for photo editing tools that can process images right from the stage of the shoot was quickly recognized by Spyne. It came up with AI-enabled tools to make image processing a cakewalk. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Sanjay Kumar, Co-Founder, and CEO, of Spyne.
1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers.
Spyne is a Deep Tech startup helping businesses and marketplaces create and upgrade high-quality product images and videos at scale with AI. Creating good catalogs today is a manual, expensive, and time-taking process. As a result, less than 10% of the sellers today on eCommerce marketplaces create catalogs. Spyne is building the industry’s first AI-powered visual cataloging platform that enables businesses to create studio-finish images 500x faster, at 1/4th cost & at scale. You don’t need expensive studios or photography skills, nor have to follow any complex, time-consuming processes. With Spyne, one can create stunning catalogs within minutes, driving approximately 40% better conversions. Currently, we are serving 80+ customers including MFC, Volkswagen, Megadealers, Sell Any Car, Karvi, Amazon India, Flipkart, etc., across 15+ countries in the automotive, food, and retail verticals.
2. With what mission and objectives, the company was set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company?
Spyne was started four years back with the idea of revolutionizing the photography industry. Back then, we were solving for the content creation and distribution channel for photographers and digital creators. However, one year into the business, we understood that photographers and digital creators usually don’t have deep pockets, and therefore we saw the market to be a little limited.
Also, around this time, there were a lot of advancements happening in the AI and ML space. Given the e-commerce background that I come from (having worked with some of the best e-commerce players – OYO, Fashion and You, Amazon, and Yatra), we clearly saw the need to automate the catalog creation process with AI to make it more efficient and less time-consuming.
Our goal was to create an efficient version of product photography, which is both easy and scalable using AI and smartphones. We launched our first product in the automotive space in 2021, and since then there has been no looking back.
3. Brief us about the founders of the company and their contributions to the company and the industry.
Spyne was founded in 2018 by Deepti Prasad and me. Deepti Prasad is an economist turned entrepreneur. She is the Co-founder of Spyne and drives marketing, branding, and growth initiatives for the company. Being passionate about people and organization, she leads the employee happiness initiatives & is responsible for leading the company’s talent functions, building strong trust-based relationships across teams, and executive leadership. Prior to Spyne, Deepti started Eventila in 2015 which was a leading photographer discovery platform and wedding planning Blog in India.
I, being the Co-Founder and CEO, am leading the strategic goals of the company and constructing the company’s roadmap. I am also leading the product, tech, AI, and business teams. In the past, I have held leadership positions and led major initiatives at Amazon, Oyo, Fashion & You, Rocket Internet, and Yatra. Keeping customers and innovation at the heart of everything I have launched multiple successful products used by millions of customers globally.
4. What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from competitors?
We are enabling businesses to automate their entire cataloging process (shoot, edit, and publish) by replacing their traditional processes with cutting-edge AI technology. We standout in this area as our AI delivers accurate results and can help businesses infinitely scale, 500X faster at 1/4th the cost.
5. Kindly mention some of the major challenges the company has faced till now.
One of the earliest challenges we faced was how to train our AI models to give accurate outputs. To get near-studio image outputs with AI, we needed to solve multiple problems, each of which required focused resolution and data training.
For example, how do we bring out the best image output of a car if the car is not shot from the correct angle or if the light is too low when the car is shot in the evening post sunset. There were also issues of surrounding objects and trees showing through the see-through windows of the cars, reflections of buildings/ trees on a car’s body, etc.
All of these were real challenges and required focused training data that photographers needed solutions. Getting a huge volume of images for each of these specific issues was extremely difficult. Therefore, we set up a data annotation team, which helped us generate focused data for each of these problems from our ongoing client projects. This strategy helped us improvise and train our AI/ML models to make them more efficient and accurate over time. As a result, our models improved their outputs from about 60-70% accuracy at the beginning to 99%+ accuracy.
6. Please brief us about the products/solutions you provide to your customers and tell us how they get value out of it.
We are helping businesses and marketplaces create studio-finish product catalog images at scale with our industry-first, computer vision, and AI-powered solutions. Our products leverage deep learning to understand the visual intent far more quickly than humans.
Through our products such as Whitelabel apps and SDK solutions, we are reducing the 2+ weeks of catalog photography process to just a few minutes. This decreases the product’s time-to-market by 80% allowing them to scale faster and efficiently.
We also have a web tool, called Spyne Darkroom that helps AI validate & edit the existing images that sellers have and instantly convert them to high-quality images for better engagement & conversions. This solution is helpful for SMB businesses who have limited SKUs and wish to change their products’ look and feel for online selling.
Our AI Editing technology is built for scale, typically editing 500+ images per minute. Enterprise and marketplaces opt for API integrations to transform their catalog at scale at nearly 1/4th the cost.
7. How do you see the company and the industry in the future ahead?
Ecommerce cataloging is a huge $40 billion+ industry. Right now, we have enterprise first approach. We want to launch our product for B2B2C at least for specific categories (automotive, eCommerce, fashion, food) in the next year. Our long-term goal is to integrate our AI camera application via SDK integration with all the major marketplaces in India and abroad.
8. AI is projected to be the next market. How is AI contributing to the making of your products and services?
In AI, we are using computer vision to automate the entire photography, specifically the cataloging practice for eCommerce businesses. We are using AI for two specific use-cases that help generate marketplace-ready, studio-finish images in a few clicks. We are empowering anyone to shoot like a professional, from their smartphones and get marketplace-compliant images. The AI filter in our App guides you to capture the right images, for example, the AI filter turns red if you are using the phone at the wrong angle, or if you are standing too close/far from the product, if there is too less /bright light, etc. With AI camera filters, we are ensuring that everyone will capture the same type of images, irrespective of who is clicking them.
The second problem we are solving is how to convert these smartphone-shot images to match up to the studio-quality images for online selling. With AI, we are automating the entire manual editing process to replace and add backgrounds, autosize, colour correct, add shadows, etc., and get the final images within seconds.
9. What are your growth plans for the next 12 months?
Currently, Spyne caters majorly to enterprises and marketplaces. We have a major clientele in the automotive, eCommerce, and food industries. However, going ahead, we aim to soon launch our services for the B2B2C segment specifically for automotive dealerships, e-Commerce, and fashion businesses. Edging forward into the future, we have big plans to expand into Metaverse and Omniverse with the AR/VR technology that we are parallelly developing.
The post Exclusive Interview with Sanjay Kumar, Co-Founder, and CEO, Spyne appeared first on .
Denial of responsibility! Techno Blender is an automatic aggregator of the all world’s media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.