After Google initially launched its search engine back in 1997, finding things online became easy for everyone. However, as the amount of content present on the internet increases and constraints like privacy settings and filters become common, discovery is rapidly emerging as the preferred way for people to find interesting or important stuff online.
Bangalore based startup
galleri5 aims to let people ‘visually’ discover interesting stuff on topics they like. The venture has built a platform where users can follow their topics of interest, and discover interesting things through relevant photos from like-minded people. As per the company, people are using galleri5 to discover
beautiful and offbeat places to travel to, unique culinary experiences to experiment, fashion and home decor ideas, etc. People can also share their own experiences on the app through photos they have clicked. The photos get tagged to relevant topics through galleri5’s in-house crowdsourcing and learning engine, so that you only see what you are interested in.
The startup raised an undisclosed amount of funds last year from well-known investors including Raghunandan G, founder of cab aggregator TaxiForSure and Phanindra Sama, founder of bus ticketing platform RedBus.
According to
Rahul Regulapati, one of the founders of galleri5 and graduate of IIT Madras and IIM Ahmedabad, ‘We believe that no platform is truly harnessing the full potential of visual user-generated content (UGC) the way we are. With over 2 billion photos being uploaded every single day onto the world wide web, the power of combining multiple photos on a single topic across users creates a far more compelling and inspiring story than what any professional would be able to create. Crowdsourcing and UGC will be the central pillars of how discovery happens in the future and we are at the forefront of this change.’
Being a 10-member strong company, galleri5 is working at the cutting edge of machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to help people find only the most relevant collection of photos on the platform. As per
Movin Jain, the other founder of galleri5 and Computer Science graduate from IIT Delhi and MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, “While the problem of search has been solved to a great extent by companies like Google, discovery is a new phenomenon and has not yet seen enough innovation. It’s a hard problem to solve, because unlike search, there is very little input from the user. But it is definitely the future of how people use the web, and that motivates us to work towards building this disruptive platform. We know it will be a challenging journey, which is why we have put together a very strong and motivated tech team. With the backing of successful entrepreneurs who have created big consumer platforms in the past, we are confident of building a product that will be used by millions of people.’
Smartphone cameras have been inching closer to professional cameras in terms of quality and technical specifications. Smartphone manufacturers like Apple and Samsung have been running extensive campaigns to showcase the capabilities of their inbuilt cameras. Many of galleri5’s users use their smartphones to capture and post high quality photos on the app, that are already inspiring others to try new experiences. According to Rahul, ‘
90% of all the content out there is user-generated. We have built a solid tech platform to sift out the best out of this 90%, and we are very hopeful that we can match the quality and power of professional content in this manner, while letting our users experience much more authentic, unbiased and inspiring content’.
The galleri5 platform is available as a mobile app on
Android and
iPhone, and also as a website for desktop users.
Very few startups in India are working in the visual discovery space. A few companies in the Silicon Valley including Pinterest have already demonstrated the power of crowdsourcing and discovery. It remains to be seen how visual discovery will change the way we use the web in the future, and whether platforms like galleri5 will be able to create a lasting impact in this space.
