IIITH Seed Fund makes investment in NicheAI startup

IIITH seed fund has invested in NicheAI, an early-stage Artificial Intelligence (AI) startup that designs accurate and computationally light algorithms to solve computer vision problems.

In general, AI algorithms require sufficient clean training data and heavy computational resources to run. However, real-life problems come with constraints such as bad training data, quick turnaround requirement and limited computational availability. This creates a significant bottleneck in taking an AI product from lab to real situations. NicheAI is using deep learning and meta heuristic inspired evolutionary algorithms to tackle these bottlenecks.

Soham Acharya, CEO, NicheAI, said, “The best engineer and architect out there is nature and natural order has designed an entity to have intelligence embedded inside the body and not somewhere else. Thus, we believe the future of AI to be on edge and not on cloud."

The startup has been assisting insurance companies analyze claims images and videos to disburse insurance claims. NicheAI's core offering is also being used by some companies to develop AI systems using local hardware and giving real-time insights from videos and images.

Founded a year back, NicheAI was initially accelerated in IIITH's AVISHKAR deep tech accelerator program. It recently closed its angel funding from IIITH Seed Fund, Times Internet, IIITH Foundation and other HNIs.

Speaking on the rationale behind the IIITH Seed Fund investment in NicheAI, Ajay Jain, Co-Founder, IIITH Seed Fund, said, "Solutions using computer vision can improve efficiency and accuracy in several industries such as insurance, roadways and manufacturing. NicheAI has provided successful solutions in some of these areas. Next up, they are confident of solving the edge deployment problem using a platform approach and less computing power. Given IIITH Seed Fund's mandate of investing in deep learning companies solving everyday problems, NicheAI fits the bill perfectly. Furthermore, given their play in a B2B space, it balances our existing portfolio. NicheAI can develop several practical applications for deep learning enabled computer vision problems which is exciting.”