Orbo.ai, an AI-powered imaging and visual enhancement startup, has announced a pre-Series A funding of $1.6 million led by institutional funds YourNest Ventures and Venture Catalysts. The round saw participation from industry veteran and ‘father of Intel Pentium’, Vinod Dham, along with John Ason (investor in Jet.com that was sold to Walmart). Existing investor Refex Capital also took part in the funding. Orbo will use the new investment to ramp up its AI-based research efforts to remain a step ahead of futuristic market demands and further create a seamless and automated visual enhancement stack.
Founded in 2015 by Manoj Shinde, Orbo uses deep learning powered technology to automatically improve imagery and provide enhanced resolutions for pictures and videos on mobiles, laptops or display devices. Essentially, Orbo is creating an amazing domino effect where network providers save extra bandwidth, content providers save millions of dollars and customers receive the best experience. The company currently provides its cutting-edge technology solutions across multiple industries including media and entertainment, 5G, retail and e-commerce.
Shinde, CEO, Orbo.ai, said, “The current investment has boosted our confidence in the R&D and IP-driven work in AI that we have been doing for a wide spectrum of industries in India and globally. The funding is great news for the entire sector as it shows the appetite for such core tech and the scale or extensibility the sector possesses. We will be using the funds to provide superior technology solutions to our customers along with expediting our expansion and hiring plans across verticals such as R&D, engineering, product development, sales and marketing.”
Shinde added that Orbo was in advanced automation trials with a number of global brands, tech companies and partners and hopes to announce around 3-5 more deals in the display and e-commerce space, and enhance viewing experiences in a variety of ways for consumers.
Orbo has been working closely with organisations such as Intel to provide its core AI technology and jointly bringing research-based vision products on their hardware to amplify their new push into the AI sector. This gives Orbo unprecedented access to companies’ distribution platforms, channels and essential data to develop any AI and computer vision-based systems with computing-at-the-edge capabilities that it brings to the table.
Source: Financial Express