Within a week of Flipkart introducing the ‘Image Search’ feature on its app, the word is out that leading fashion app, Voonik and ethnic marketplace, Craftsvilla have initiated ‘Image Search’ feature for its users too.
Normally a buyer has to type a product’s name or keywords in the search tab to get a list of products. With image based search, one can get product recommendations based on a picture they feed in the system. It could be an image they saw in a magazine or online. While explaining the feature, co-founder of Craftsvilla, Manoj Gupta said, “If the customer likes a colour or pattern, they’d want to be shown a similar kind of product and this feature is incredibly useful.”
The technology that enables this feature is computer vision, a complex arm of computer science. This tool gives computer the power to recognise images and throw out valid search results. It studies an image and recognises its colour, pattern and other features. And then a list of similar apparel are sorted and presented to the user. Although new in the ecommerce sector, many big companies like Google, Microsoft and Facebook have been investing a great deal in computer vision.
And who’s helping Craftsvilla and Voonik to do so? Chennai based Artificial Intelligence & Computer Vision company, Mad Street Den. Co-founder and CEO of the tech company, Ashwini Asokan shared the benefit of image search, “This also allows the company to generate tags automatically as opposed to needing someone to manually tag aspects of clothing.”
She further added, “We’re not just a visual search company. We’re an artificial intelligence company that has a horizontal computer vision platform going across recognition of objects, gestures and emotions.”
Image search is a great feature, especially for apparels and fashion accessories. A book or a gadget can be described in words as they have specific names/titles. But a fashion look that one sees in a magazine may be hard to describe in precise words for all. This is when visual search comes in handy and has an advantage over text tags. The search results are more accurate, contextual and engaging.
Apart from fashion, this feature can work for home decor, grooming & makeup products and grocery category.
Editor team is specialized in introducing the marketplace content targeting the Indian online sellers. They plan and coordinate to bring the appealing content for the small businesses on how to partner with the e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart and strategies for improving their online business.
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