Siftr, an artificial intelligence powered platform that uses deep learning to curate digital images was founded by former Adobe employees Romil Mittal and Mayank Bhagya, last year. The platform offers 3 products targeted at different user communities, Siftr Magic Cleaner- helps clear junk images and videos from phone messengers like Whatsapp, Line, Hike and Telegram with a single tap, Siftr- Photo organiser, a photo curation platform that browses and discovers photos creating meaningful collections for personal use, and Siftr Website builder- self-updating photo website aimed at creative community. With Siftr’s range of products, the company aims to intelligently organize images of end users.
Talking about their initial days, Romil Mittal told BWDisrupt, “We were always clicking more and more images with our phones and posting them on social networks, but it was tough whenever we wanted to find some of our great shots which we clicked in the past. That's where we decided to start this venture and solve the problem of plenty.
We are hard core technology company, and have built a world class artificial engine for computer vision.”
Since its inception last year, the startup has built more than 10,000 websites, helping people convert their content on social media pages into websites. The Magic Cleaner app launched in May this year and has been downloaded more than a lakh times. Siftr is hoping to target 1 million users for all its products together this year. The app is available for a free download in the
App Store and
Play Store.
Commenting on Siftr's differentiation factors, Romil added, “We are using computer vision to solve basic problems faced by consumers. For instance, one of our latest products is a Magic Cleaner for WhatsApp. If you are WhatsApp user, you would have faced the challenge of manually deleting junk photos from your phone, every other day. Try our magic cleaner and see how computer vision can make your life much easier.”
The company has a vision to solve the problem of plenty in the image category. Each and every user has massive number of photos and Siftr does an in-depth analysis of these images. It analyses more than 2 million images every day, and use GAE and AWS as the underlying infrastructure providers. The Delhi-based Company also secured $150,000 in seed funding from early-stage fund Venture Catalyst in January this year.
The firm is soon going to add native advertising in the free version of its products and also are going to launch premium paid plans for its customers.
When asked about the challenges faced by the company, Mayank Bhagya mentioned, “Identifying the right target audience and then being able to reach out to them was something which took time, and is a continuous process. Apart from that, hiring the right talent is a key challenge - though we have been fortunate to be able to attract some of the best minds in the industry.”
Speaking about the market opportunity, he further added, “Images make up our lives today. More than a billion images are uploaded everyday to Internet, and they need to be curated. So it's a huge opportunity, which will keep growing with time.”
About Founders
Romil Mittal, Co-FounderRomil Mittal, graduate from IISc Bangalore comes with over a decades experience in business and product management. Over the years he has worked with companies such as Sasken, Veritas Software and Adobe. Romil has extensive understanding about AI platforms and realized the need of visual discovery in the digital world and co-founded Siftr Labs in 2015.
Mayank Bhagya, Co-FounderMayank Bhagya, graduate from NIT Suratkal comes with in depth knowledge about image projection algorithms and embedded systems. He is well versed with deploying, monitoring, logging, alerting, security and apache configuration. He has worked with NIAS, Manipal Dot Net and Adobe before co- founding Siftr Labs. At Siftr, Mayank heads the entire technology platform.
