ZestMoney buys AI firm PhotographAI

New Delhi: Bengaluru-based start-up ZestMoney on Thursday said it has acquired artificial intelligence platform PhotographAI to expand its technology basket and deepen its presence in consumer credit. The company did not disclose the value of the deal.

In a statement, ZestMoney,owned by Camden Town Technologies Pvt. Ltd, said it aims to strengthen its technology in AI, visual AI and optical character recognition (OCR converts scanned documents to machine understandable format). It also claims to provide the most advanced automated credit assessment service.

“We are seeing increasingly high levels of demand from consumers in Tier 1 (cities) and beyond—customers traditionally underserved by banks and credit cards,” said Lizzie Chapman, co-founder and chief executive at ZestMoney.

“Having a completely digital application process and underwriting process is now critical to serve these customers,” she said.

Bengaluru-based PhotographAI is backed by venture capital firms Orios Venture Partners and IndiaQuotient. It serves as a platform to deliver technologies such as image classification, OCR, document enhancement, text analytics and video analytics.

Founded in 2013 by Mikhil Raj and Karan Varshney, PhotographAI counts financial technology and e-commerce companies as its clients.

“The PhotographAI team has developed superior API-based AI solutions that we have been testing for sometime in authentication, on-boarding and underwriting,” said Ashish Anantharaman, co-founder and chief technology officer at ZestMoney. “This acquisition will help us strengthen our capabilities in these areas and build additional in-house solutions for OCR and facial recognition.”

Founded in 2015 by Chapman, Priya Sharma and Anantharaman, ZestMoney uses AI and machine learning technology to do risk profiling of e-commerce consumers who opt for equated monthly instalment payment option and works with financial institutions to offer loans to such consumers.