Artificial Intelligence startup rides the demand curve

A one-stop artificial intelligence engine that wades through over one million user reviews, 50,000 phone specifications, 5000 phone variants and 1000 phones produced by 160 mobile brands to help netizens compare, choose and buy wisely the best phone for their needs and pay only for the features they want.  All this in a click of a mouse for free.

20 per cent of e-commerce revenues are driven by affiliates.  When e-commerce business touches  $ 10bn in 2016, E-commerce affiliates like BuySmaart can eye a potential market of $2 bn.

Hyderabad's ENIXTA Innovations, an Artificial Intelligence startup, launches buysmaart.com – a product discovery platform that uses artificial intelligence to recommend the best phones and phones with features that you need the most for you.

Announcing this at a national launch media meet organized here in Hyderabad, Giri Devanathan, CEO and Founder of ENIXTA Innovations said Artificial Intelligence is the next major phenomenon in computing, adding that the ENIXTA is an artificial intelligence company that creates products to help you take the right decisions, saving time and money. Our first product - BuySmaart is a website that helps you buy the right phone. Key to this product is the artificial intelligence engine that extracts meaning from more than a million user reviews.

With over 5,000 mobile phone variants, having over 50,000 technical specifications and over 1 million user reviews, the buying decision for mobile phones is very complex, Giri said.  To simplify this, we used a combination of AI algorithms, personalization and a simple and an intuitive user-interface. The buying decision can be decomposed into - (1) What to buy  and (2) Where to buy.

BuySmaart allows you to customize your search, expressing how important each component (camera, battery etc.) is to you. The system then applies these criteria to show personalized search results. For e.g. - a user who emphasises cameras will see phones with good cameras ranked higher in the search results, whereas a one who cares more about the battery will see a different list–in which good-battery phones are ranked higher.

Benefits users get are many. It saves time. Users get comprehensive information on their finger tips – with over a million reviews and over 50000 specifications analyzed instantaneously. It saves money.  Users get personalized recommendations - they don't need to pay for things they won't use.

“We provide a list of top retailers from which users can buy the phone,” Giri explained, “Currently, we are only in the Mobile Phone Category. In the near future we will expand into tablets, laptops, cameras and cars Giri informed. We will also expand to other geographies in future,” he said.

“Affiliate commissions will be our revenue model.” Whenever a user clicks on’ buy’ from our website and goes to a retailer website (Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, Naaptol,etc) and buys a product we get a commission for referral, Giri said.

Mobile phones shipments in India are expected to be 289 mn for 2015 (Gartner). Overall revenues for mobile phone sales were expected to cross $10 bn in 2014(BGR). Around 20-25% of mobiles were bought online.  So there is a lot of potential for platforms like buysmaart.com as still large chunk of 75 to 80 per cent buy from stores.

To understand this business and estimate market size we need to know about E-Commerce affiliation, Giri explained. E-commerce affiliates include product discovery & exploration sites, price comparison sites, daily deals, and coupons sites. E-commerce affiliates in developed countries like USA contribute 20% of total sales.  In India e-commerce is expected to reach $10 bn in 2016. Assuming a similar ratio of 20% for India, we are looking at about $2 bn in e-commerce revenues being driven by affiliates.   Actual revenue of the affiliate is a commission of this sale, Giri explained.