Dataweave offers price analysis and assortment intelligence to e-commerce sites

Naina KhedekarJul 18, 2016 18:15:25 IST

With the booming e-commerce sites, the space is not only known to be crowded but also highly competitive. There are many startups working at analytics to further provide support to the space. Bengaluru-based startup Dataweave, led by IIIT Bangalore duo Karthik Bettadapura and Vikranth Ramanolla, uses deep-learning and AI to serve as a Brand Analytics platform for price analysis. Along with price, they also offer  assortment intelligence, which essentially means the number or type of products compared to its competitors. For instance, a particular product type listed by an online site compared to its competitor, or yellow shirts running out of stock compared to red shirts, and so on.

Now a team of 60, Dataweave is headquartered in Bengaluru, with offices in Delhi and the US. It has clients in  over 10 countries, out of which many are also served in their native language. Recently, the startup marked its entry into the Japanese market with a partnership with Tokyo based Aucfan Co.

"Our platform is entirely built internally and uses a host of open source tools along with proprietary systems and algorithms. Some of the techniques we use include deep learning and AI based algorithms. Our technology also uses "human-in-the-loop" approaches to constantly improve our algorithms while guaranteeing accuracy of insights," explains Bettadapura.

In fact, human-in-the-loop approach is something that distinguishes it from the others. He adds that 16GB iPhone 6 and 16GB iPhone 6s, may have just one differentiating letter in its name, but they are two different products. AI and deep learning has to be trained and uses generalised rules when it sees two of the same products, and this data has to be prepared with some human inputs. "AI and deep learning need a lot of screening of data for optimisation and accuracy. This data has to be prepared with some human inputs. One of our key differentiators is our Human in the loop process. This process helps us provide a higher level of accuracy while scaling and improving our algorithms. This accuracy ensures our clients are able to use us with more confidence and embed us more deeply in their processes and systems." he adds.

"Our data feeds can also used by aggregator websites, price matching engines, and developers. In fact, we provide a free demo access to our APIs. Additionally, we have partnerships with consulting firms, data aggregator firms and large PE funds as well," he further adds.

Bettadapura comes with over nine years of experience in building and managing large scale Web and data analytics products and platforms, while Ramanolla has years of professional career building big data platforms and large scale unstructured data aggregation and analysis engines. It was during their previous roles handling the data team that they realised the importance of "alternate data" or "publicly available data" in analyzing external factors that impact businesses. The aim to solve issues related to "the right data not being available in the right form at the right time", led to the formation of Dataweave in 2011.

Dataweave follows a SAAS based monthly recurring revenue model. It has raised funding from Blume Ventures, TLabs, 5ideas, Rajan Anandan, among others.