India Startup Uses AI to Help Predict Fashion Trends
The global fashion industry is worth over 2 Trillion dollars. That’s right. Trillion. While the industry continues to grow, consumers are getting more demanding and less predictable in their purchase behavior. One Indian startup is looking to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to help companies big and small predict fashion trends before they happen.
Moodboard Analytics Uses AI to Find What’s Trending in Real-Time
Meet Delhi-based Moodboard Analytics. They are using things like artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, and data extraction to help predict what’s trending and what’s about to trend in the fashion world.
Moodboard keeps tabs on colors, patterns, and styles to see which are growing and which are losing popularity among the internet masses. This type of info can be valuable for companies planning their strategies and designs for an upcoming fashion season.
Moodboard scans the internet, analyzing data and images from absolutely everything including articles, blogs, message boards, consumer reviews, and social media. Computer and text vision models are applied to help analyze all of that data. They’ll look at everything from a fashion influencer’s blog to your aunt’s Pinterest.
Subscribers can access a cloud-based platform which provides the fashion insights in real time. Say a celebrity wears a new dress at an awards show. Users can see exactly how fashion trends are being affected up to the minute.
Merging Analytics and Fashion
Moodboard Analytics was founded by Anandita Bhuyan in 2018. After interning at a fashion retailer, she saw the potential of merging analytics and fashion. She didn’t have any experience with AI or machine learning but was able to lean on friends to help her learn the technology and build the fashion analytic tool.
“The retail supply chains have multiple elements comprising fashion designer, product creators, margins and inventory analyst who rely on numbers and statistics on a daily basis. While interning with the retailer, I noticed that there is a gap in this space which cater to the creative part of the fashion supply chain and that’s how the idea of Moodboard was born,” said Bhuyan.
Moodboard Analytics and Target Accelerator Program
The future seems bright for the young company. Recently Moodboard was one of six startups selected in India by Target as part of their Accelerator program. The program focuses on technology-driven ideas to create solutions for the retail environment. The chosen startups are given access to resources and mentors as well as a workspace at Target’s Bengaluru offices.
While based in India, Moodboard Analytics is also targeting the North American and European markets. The young startup has already partnered with a few fashion companies including a luxury Canadian retailer.
“Fashion is very visually-oriented and abstract so, what we aim to do is to create an end-to-end product that is visual and intuitive. In order to achieve this AI, image recognition and computer vision have been leveraged on a large scale in our platform,” said Bhuyan.
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