ViSenze Partners with Flipkart to bring image search to mobile shoppers in India

India's largest online marketplace, Flipkart, started rolling out image search on its mobile app to revolutionize the shopping experience, using ViSenze technology for visual search and image recognition. The newly introduced image search allows users to upload photos of fashion items and find similar products in terms of color, pattern or style inside the Flipkart merchandise database. This eliminates keywords guessing when searching for a product, thereby simplifying the search process.

"We're very excited to partner with Flipkart and offer their users an enhanced shopping experience powered by our visual search. And we are proud we had managed to offer a solution that is also capable to handle unique needs for the Indian market such as ethnic wear," said Oliver Tan, CEO and Co-Founder of ViSenze.

Additionally, users browsing Flipkart's catalogue can find visually similar products with a single tap. This brings offline-like shopping experience to mobile, acting as a virtual "shop assistant" who would show products of same color or design when users see something they like.

This simplified search experience comes handy on the online marketplace that lists over 30 million products and is accessed by 45 million registered users, 75% of them via smartphones. These new features are currently in beta and are due to be released to all users in the upcoming days.

"Discovering a fashion product online varies from user to user and is more complex as compared to other categories. A lot of fashion purchase decisions are influenced by similar products seen by users. The image search feature provides a way to find similar products on Flipkart as well as reduces the search/ browsing time, making the overall product discovery and shopping experience simple.” said Flipkart’s Chief Product Officer Punit Soni.

The company originates from a R&D spin-off from the National University of Singapore, and develops highly advanced visual search algorithms, combining state-of-the-art deep learning with the latest computer vision technology to solve search and recognition problems faced by businesses in the visual web space.

"The partnership with Flipkart not only attests to the strength of our products, but also reinforces our mission to enable retailers to capitalize on smart innovations in visual technology to uplift conversions, while empowering shoppers with real-time ability to search without the hassle of keyword guessing. And we will continue to innovate in this area," added Oliver Tan.

Punit further added, "This is in line with our ambition to create a very intuitive thoughtful mobile experience that is universally accessible to everybody, regardless of whether they use text or visuals to communicate with us."