Gaze, an AI startup based in Singapore and Bangladesh managed to raise US$830,000 in seed funding led by US-based venture capital firm Anchorless Bangladesh.
Anchorless Bangladesh is focused on investing in Bangladesh. Following the capital injection made by the venture firm, angel investor Mohammad Maaz also co- invested in the startup.
Gaze plans to use the funding for its visual recognition application programming interface (API) platform where incorporation of visual recognition into any software system or stack will be effortless.
Application programming interface (API) is a software intermediary that enables communication between two applications. For instance, apps like Facebook and actions like sending an instant message both use APIs.
The API offered by Gaze for visual recognition technologies are spoof- proof face recognition, product recognition, and multilingual OCR (Optical Character Recognition).
Gaze was founded in 2018 by Shehzad Noor Taus Priyo (CEO, co-founder), Motasim Rahan (COO, co- founder), Kevin Pierce (CTO), and Dr. Nabeel Mohammed (Chief of Research). The startup currently has a team of 23 people across Bangladesh, Canada and Singapore.
The firm aims to build a developer ecosystem that allows global creative talents to create their own AI- enabled products and services. In other words, Gaze plans to integrate AI into everyday life.
“Our goal is to get any developer to ‘Hello World’ in under five minutes. The way we do that is by building the best developer experience and iterating on community feedback. We believe very strongly in the power of open source communities; they have, time in and time again, changed the world for the better,” said CEO Taus.
“When we look at the incredible engineering and technical talent in Bangladesh today, it seems obvious to us that a few standout companies will be able to rally the troops and build an indispensable product utilized by people around the world. We see that potential clearly in Gaze, led not only by a long-term global vision, but also backed up with world-class technology offering practical value for its users,” Rahat Ahmed, Founding Partner and CEO, Anchorless Bangladesh.
The AI startup claims that with its technology, online transactions will be safer, finding the desired products will be easier, sign up/in will be effortless, checking into the workplace will be contactless, and paying for parking will be seamless.
As to date, Gaze has worked with a city police department to help improve traffic management, a defense agency to help secure their headquarters around- the- clock, and large factories to keep track of daily vehicle flow.
Gaze is actively seeking opportunities to take on the facial recognition market worth approximately US$4 billion in 2020 which has a growth percentage of 15% every year. In order to execute it, the firm is currently forming different pricing schemes, including a pay- as- you- go model- priced at US$0.002 per call for its existing customers- and a freemium subscription.
