AIndra Systems – See things the way they see it

By Dekhane Eeshita

Posted on January 24, 2017

AIndra Systems is an Artificial Intelligence based technology start-up. They create products in the domain of Artificial Intelligence and specifically in the area of Computer Vision. Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision & Machine Learning are the technologies that are at the forefront of new innovation that is happening in today’s World. Their aim is to build a cool start-up, working on solving some high-impact problems with the help of deep technology. They believe believe that they can address problems of a huge magnitude with the aid of this technology. No doubt this made them one of the top 10 AI based start-ups in India. They have been able to process facial images captured from any photo capturing device and recognize or verify the person of interest.

AIndra Systems is a Bengaluru, India based startup. It was founded in 2012.

AIndra Systems Founders :

Adarsh Natarajan : He is a graduate of IIM Bangalore. Adarsh had 12 years of valuable industry experience working in top-tier organizations like Lucent, Infosys, Wipro, etc in various roles and across. He decided to turn into an Entrepreneur by starting AIndra Systems. His vision was to create products in India that would have a huge impact on the society. Artificial Intelligence was the vehicle that he chose to create those products.

Ritabrata Bhaumik : He did his B. Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, and then MBA from IIM Bangalore. He is fondly known as Rito. Before joining AIndra Systems in mid 2016, Rito had 20 years of valuable industry experience working in top-tier organisations like IBM, GE, Accenture, etc. Prior to this, Rito founded another m-commerce Start-up Beaconifi Mobility Pvt. Ltd.

Abhishek Mishra : He is a graduate of NIT Jalandhar, Punjab and had 5 years of Sales & marketing experience prior to joining AIndra Systems in mid 2013. Abhishek led a team of  600 engineers as chief Student Convener in his College and hosted one of the best technical symposium while managing a total budget of 2.7 Million INR while quadrupling the allotted budget.

AIndra Systems – the organization, has a great constellation of Advisors and Mentors who work very closely. Vijayasimha, CEO of OneBreath and Bhushan KC, successful serial entrepreneur – also mentors and advises this competent and accomplished Founding team. Their development team is mentored by Venkatesh Murthy, currently doing his PhD in University of Massachusetts, USA. Apart from this, they work closely with IIT Madras, IIT Mandi and IISc in a collaborative engagement.
AIndra Founding team is proud to be taking risks and having the courage to shape the future and make a dent in the World, in their own way.

Foundation Stone :

As the Founder of AIndra Systems, Adarsh Natarajan’s Vision was to create products that had a huge impact on the society by making something accessible to everyone with the use of latest technology. Back in mid-2012, Adarsh was presented with a challenge by The Centre for Public policy (CPP) at IIMB to find a solution to subsidy leakage problem occurring as part of the Mid-Day meals program run by the Govt. of Karnataka in Rural schools. The most effective way to prevent subsidy leakage was the bio-metric identification of the beneficiaries. The most commonly used bio-metric identification method is fingerprint. But unfortunately a significant portion of fingerprint images (between 10 – 15% of the population) couldn’t be used for bio-metric identification.

Due to skin conditions (wet or dry, cuts and bruises), sensor noise (the fidelity of the lens of fingerprint capturing device get degraded after repeated use especially in areas where cleanliness standard is low), inherently low-quality fingers (elderly people, manual workers where the ridges and troughs in the fingers get worn out), changing nature of fingerprints in young children, etc fingerprint identification method does not work for a significant portion of the population. After conducting extensive field research, they found that no solution would effectively work on the ground except a non-contact and tamper-proof facial bio-metric identification system. This was the genesis how their product SmartAttendance was born. The possibility of using Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Computer Vision to solve this problem, enthused Adarsh so much that he decided to anchor the startup on this emerging technology.

AIndra Systems Products :

The early prototype of their first product was built using Artificial Intelligence, primarily Computer Vision and Machine Learning. Being passionate about the technology and its impact on society, they chose computer vision as the tool of choice.  Since then they have been assiduously working, primarily through preventing identity fraud, to address the problems and fill the gap pertaining to the under-efficient public and private programs which aims to uplift the disadvantaged section of our society.

While the first product centred on Identity and Fraud Management was developed and ready to hit the market, Adarsh started looking at adjacencies that AIndra could enter into, in order to exploit the technology expertise that they had built within the startup. It was during this time that he discussed with a large set of experts from diverse backgrounds to understand the applicability of deep technology like the one that they had expertise in. He met veterans in the Indian Medical devices industry who impressed upon him the need to bring deep technology in the medical devices space and develop products that are relevant and contextual to India. They developed a Medical device to screen for a certain kind of cancer using Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence coupled with Computer Vision and Mechatronics. This product was their foray into Healthcare. They were also able to get funding from both National and International sources for this Healthcare product. Apart from this, they are also now working with Insurance and Automotive companies to help develop products for object recognition using Computer Vision as a tool.

Their machine learning based algorithm is now robust enough to verify any photo ID proof (e.g Aadhaar Card photo or passport size photo, etc) against a claimed person’s facial images captured with any smartphone.

Drishti, their patent pending technology based on Artificial Intelligence, provides handheld devices with inbuilt cameras like smartphones, tablets and laptops, the ability to detect and identify people.

Images that are captured using these devices are sent to a cloud based server. They are then processed by AIndra’s intelligent algorithms to detect and identify objects. Subsequently useful data visualizations are generated for relevant stakeholders in an organization, all in a matter of seconds. With the ability to also gather demographic data, their system has the ability to generate contextual data that can then be consumed by Marketers. Their algorithms are built to work with video streams as well, thereby allowing a degree of flexibility when it comes to leveraging existing infrastructure.

Currently they don’t have any direct competitor in India for Face-Recognition bio-metric. The mobile based visual identification and monitoring solution that they provide is disrupting the traditional Fingerprint based bio-metric competition.

This startup highlights the advantages of their solution vis-a-vis their bio-metric competitors like portability, offline capability, tamper-proof and ease-of-use with devices of everyday usage like smartphones, laptops, etc.They are also working with Insurance companies to develop products for object recognition using Computer Vision as a tool, thereby broad-basing uses of the technology.

AIndra Systems has partnered with :

1. Skill Development, Training & Placement Institutes
2. Facility Management Companies
3. Health care Systems
4. Government Services
5. Micro-Finance Institutions
6. Educational Institutions
7. Insurance sector

They are working with companies in Insurance & other verticals to develop novel products based on object recognition using Computer Vision as a tool, thereby broad-basing uses of the technology they have developed and expanding their growth in the market. They are looking for funding to scale up their Research, Sales and Marketing effort to increase the client base and increase awareness of their solution in the market to get more business, as well as invest more in the product development to address real-life problems in industry using computer vision and machine learning as a tool. Read more about Indian Startups.

Surely these are the amazing things that they see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zEjhwSMBwo

AIndra Systems – See things the way they see it