AI Startup Mad Street Den Closes Series A Round Of Funding

Artificial intelligence may still seem futuristic to many, but a startup trying to bring artificial intelligence into our daily lives has piqued the interest of investors, reportedly raising $5 million in a Series A round of venture funding. It comes nearly a year-and-a-half after the startup, Mad Street Den, closed a $1.5 million round of seed financing, which, according to a report, was the largest seed round raised by a startup ever in the Indian ecosystem.

The company is registered in the U.S., but the husband and wife team behind it works mainly out of India. It was founded two-and-a-half years ago by Anand Chandrasekaran, a neuroscientist who graduated from Stanford, and his wife, Ashwini Asokan. Asokan is an Intel executive who worked at the chip manufacturer’s research arm, Intel Labs.

With the company’s artificial intelligence technology, dubbed Vue.AI, Mad Street Den provides eCommerce sites with a slew of AI-powered offerings, including visual search, recommended automated emails to customers and tagging of products without human intervention. Retailers can also use the technology to create customized homepages for brands based on the browsing habits of customers.

But the startup isn’t stopping with the retail industry. In an interview, Chandrasekaran said the company continues to experiment with its current modules, aiming to find fits for the technology outside of retail. Mad Street Den makes products for mobile gaming, engagement analysis, Internet of Things, photo apps and social media. And while it isn’t looking to develop something geared toward consumers, the company can never say never. “There’s not going to be just one path to AI but several of them. One path, however, could be through a consumer-focused approach. That’s not the only one, though. That’s what Mad Street Den is going to be about, a multi-faced approach and intense research,” he said in the interview.