Port Harcourt-Based Startup, Touchabl, Raises $20,000 for its Artificial Intelligence System

A Nigerian artificial intelligence company, Touchabl, has just scored itself an impressive round of funding. The Port Harcourt-based startup just secured $20,000 in funding from GenesysTechHub.

With the startup’s innovation, people can search and shop for items in a picture just by clicking on them. Quite unique, right?

Using artificial intelligence techniques, Touchabl can understand what items exist in a picture. And when a user selects an item, the AI goes on to receive more information about it.

Naturally, innovations like this are usually believed to be unique to tech heavy weights like Google, Facebook and Microsoft. Thankfully, this Port Harcourt startup has seen an opportunity and is taking the initiative.

https://twitter.com/Thecharlesochei/status/997065515683188737

Speaking to Disrupt Africa in December, Touchabl’s CEO and Founder, Gabriel Eze stated that, “we believe that this will revolutionize how we discover things in any of the 675 billion photos shared online every year. Though this solution is tailor-made for fashion and lifestyle, the technology can be adapted for education, medical sciences and diagnostics, and to assist visually impaired persons to ‘storify’ any picture just by touching it.”

The startup is aiming to play a big role in online shopping. “We realised that these touches were better indicators of user interest when compared to the traditional comments and likes.”

Related: Accounting Startup, Accounteer Wins Lagos Edition of MEST Africa Challenge

 Touchbl and the GenesysTechHub Funding

Launched in October 2017, this is the first funding round Touchabl has received. The startup has been bootstrapping for a while. And Eze confessed that receiving funding for this innovation was a huge achievement.

The GenesysTech Hub funding will bolster product development, research and cost of operations as the startup continues to scale.

“Since launching in public beta, we collected some interesting feedback and have significantly modified our technology and value proposition. GenesysTech Hub is providing us with training, mentorship and critical network to position us into becoming a hugely successful business”, said Eze.

Eze says this milestone comes with a lot of perks: recognition, awareness, focus, and validation for angels, VCs and possibly, Touchabl’s next founding round investors.

This is quite an impressive feat for the Nigerian startup and we look forward to seeing this interesting innovation go mainstream. Google better be paying attention!