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It was when Vikram Gupta discovered that video AI (artificial intelligence for video surveillance) could become a game-changer in different industry verticals that Awiros, a Gurugram-based video AI app marketplace, was born.
Vikram Gupta, founder and CEO, Awiros
“During my doctoral research at Carnegie Mellon University, US, on building an OS (operating system) for network embedded systems, I realized the potential of video AI and grew confident about democratizing access to this technology that enables a customer to discover and source video analytics solutions easily,” explains Gupta, founder and CEO, Awiros.
Gupta then partnered with Yatin Kavishwar, who was experienced in building and executing GTM strategies for Tier 1 and IT companies, to accelerate the journey of Awiros. The platform is an OS similar to the one on mobile phones that enables developers to build their applications. They get 90 to 95 per cent of the building blocks ready and only need to add their modules to create apps that can be monetized, thereby causing the time to market being cut down by 50-70 per cent, according to Gupta.
Today, Awiros claims to have deployed its solutions across 50,000 cameras across more than 14 smart and safe cities in the country. There are already more than 60 ready-to-use commercially deployed apps on the AwirosAppStack, the company further states.
“Awiros has been one of the few deep tech startups to have raised funding in the second half of 2022 despite a volatile funding market,” notes Gupta. Last month, the company raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Inflexor and Exfinity to accelerate growth and global expansion.
“As the adoption is still at a nascent stage and requires significant investment in industrial R&D and global GTM, few VCs back such deeptech startups,” says Gupta as he credits the investors at Inflexor and Exfinity for believing in the company’s vision and execution capability.
After the prolonged adverse impact of the pandemic, he is optimistic about an upsurge in market sentiment for the AI industry. Indeed, according to some forecasts, the global video AI analytics market is expected to expand from $7.1 billion in 2022 to over $20 billion by 2027.
“Awiros is different from other players in the video AI segment because we have built a holistic platform and marketplace for video AI apps. From our marketplace, users can deploy different applications as per their needs and developers can also create new applications. Thus, we enable greater solutions with scalability and features instead of being a single application service provider,” he says as he expands on the company’s USP.
Awiros’ ambitious aim is to become the default entry point for enterprises to discover, adopt and deploy video AI at scale. The company plans to expand to South East Asia, Middle East and North America. It also strives to have a marketplace with more than 1,000 applications catering to many more industry sectors.
“The potential of video AI is huge and we are now positioned well to make a global success story from India,” claims Gupta.