Mad Street Den raises funds from Sequoia Capital

Chennai-based startup Mad Street Den Systems which works on artificial intelligence (AI) has acquired an undisclosed amount in funds from Sequoia Capital and its existing investors Exfinity Venture Partners LLP and GrowX Venture Management in a series A funding round.

The company started by an Indian couple, Ashwini Asokan, a former Intel Corp employee, and Anand Chandrasekaran, a neuroscientist, is registered in the US, but functions out of Chennai. Mad Street Den will use the A series fund to reimagine the future of retail while building it's core computer vision platform.

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"There's a fabulous list of women out there doing some of the most cutting edge work in tech. This is specifically true of AI and Robotics across the globe. I'm really happy to be a part of that community. My start-up has 50% women, and many many of them are data scientists and computer vision engineers. There's a lot of us out there. I hope we start seeing more and more of us in the news," said Asokan in an interview with SheThePeople.TV shortly after the announcement.

As it makes money, however, the firm plans to hire more scientists in its San Francisco branch, so that they can fully explore AI as a workable technology.

Gautam Mago, managing director at Sequoia Capital India Advisors had this to say on the development  “Mad Street Den is a pioneer in what we think of as the next wave of AI startups, which will be capable of making versatile intelligence possible with small data sets, and yield magical results. Significant learning, and not just label training is at the heart of these startups, which are only now beginning to emerge.”

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The company’s employees are spread across the US, Europe and India and are a mix of neuroscientists, data scientists, Computer Vision experts, marketers and designers. With a mission of  Designing AI for humans by humans, the team’s focus is to bring its Deep Tech to billions across the globe.

Feature Image Credit: rediff.com