Mad Street Den, based in Redwood City, California, is led by CEO and founder Ashwini Asokan and develops enterprise AI products. Its Blox platform helps large enterprises create clean and enriched data, power personalized customer experiences, and automate complex document workflows. The company also offers Vue.ai, a unified Visual AI platform for retail that uses image recognition and data science to generate product and customer intelligence and combine these with market insights. Mad Street Den acquired Inturn, a New York-based enterprise solution that helps retailers monetize slow-moving and excess inventory. In January 2023 the company raised $30M in a Series C and intends to use the funds to expand its artificial intelligence offerings across industries. The Series C was led by Avatar Growth Capital. Mad Street Den develops AI technology and a suite of products for retail and e-commerce under the Vue.ai sub-brand, including visual search, AI tagging, personalized homepages and tailored product recommendations. Vue.ai comprises roughly 14 fashion-focused products; the company also builds AI features for mobile gaming, engagement analysis, IoT, photo apps and social media (gaze-tracking, gesture detection). The startup is registered in the U.S. but is principally located in Chennai, India, and maintains offices in London and San Francisco. Founders Anand Chandrasekaran and Ashwani Asokan are ex‑Silicon Valley executives with technical backgrounds; the company was about two-and-a-half years old at the time of the article. On the business side, Mad Street Den reports it has been generating revenue from day one via multi-year, enterprise-style deals typically charged by API calls, and it is focused on scaling rather than immediate profitability. Near-term plans include expanding the San Francisco AI team (to roughly 5–6 members), growing headcount from about 50 to 75, rolling out offline offerings using anonymous video/image recognition with retail partners, and proving scale over the next 12 months. Mad Street Den is a Chennai-based artificial intelligence and computer-vision company founded in mid-2014 by Ashwini Asokan and Anand Chandrasekaran. It provides AI and computer-vision capabilities to businesses worldwide via its cloud-based platform, MADStack, which offers a range of computer-vision modules. The firm's flagship product is a visual-search tool for fashion e-commerce that finds and recommends clothing items based on images. Mad Street Den also serves industries including gaming, ad tech, and analytics (user engagement measurement and market research). The company has raised a seed round of $1.5 million (about Rs 9 crore) and says the funds will be used for technology development. Founders bring industry and academic experience: Ashwini has product and interaction-design experience including Intel and Carnegie Mellon credentials, while Chandrasekaran has an electrical-engineering background with a PhD in Neuroscience and prior industry roles.

Total raised

$32M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series C

Latest activity

Jan 2023