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Presti uses GenAI to replace expensive photo shoots in the furniture industry

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If you’ve ever bought a settee online, have you ever ever considered the houses you see in the background of product photos? When it comes time to launch a brand new collection, furniture brands typically spend a small fortune on photo shoots. It’s a tedious and expensive process, since it’s hard to move furniture around.

That’s why a French startup called PriestFounded in November 2022, uses generative AI to transform a single product image into a practical lifestyle photo. The company just raised $3.5 million in a seed round led by global investment firm Partech, which also includes several angel investors.

“We picked up the phone really quickly and talked to 50 potential users,” Presti co-founder and CEO Nabil Toumi told TechCrunch. “And they all said the same thing. Creating product visuals was a very long process, it cost a lot of money, and they didn’t have a simple solution for creating those images. At the same time, it was really the most important asset for brands to create a unique identity and sell online.”

Presti puts it this manner:

Image sources: Priest

Involved in this:

Image sources: Priest

Initially, Presti didn’t limit its focus to furniture corporations. However, the startup quickly realized that furniture corporations face some particularly difficult problems.

“They had to rent a nice house for the photo shoot, they had to transport the products — so they had high logistics costs. And these photo shoots were planned months in advance and ended up costing them hundreds of thousands, even millions of euros a year,” Toumi said.

At its core, Presti uses Stable Diffusion XL as its base model. It has been trained and modified to perform particularly well for product images in the furniture industry.

At first, the team tried using the regular Stable Diffusion XL. But they quickly realized there have been some issues. “The sofa would have legs added to it, and the back would be distorted,” Toumi said. Similarly, getting the perspective right was difficult. For example, the wall behind the sofa had to be parallel to the sofa.

“At the same time, something that’s really important is the dataset that we trained our model on. We currently have over 75,000 images of ultra-high-quality furniture images in our industry that we can use to train our model to strengthen the learning process for the specific use case, for these types of images,” Toumi said.

Presti didn’t want to stop at generating backgrounds. Customers also can add accessories. For example, if you happen to’re generating product photos for a brand new sofa, you may add pillows. These pillows will forged realistic shadows on the sofa, so that they won’t seem like something added in Photoshop.

Similarly, furniture brands typically have several variations of the same model with different textures and colours. While it’s still a piece in progress, Presti hopes its customers will give you the chance to swap materials using its tool. As a result, it should be much easier for corporations using Presti to release latest products.

On the other hand, freelance photographers won’t like the latest product. And whether the creativity and originality of other expert individuals who might work on a physical shoot, akin to on-location stylists, will be completely replaced by machine-generated backdrops—without the resulting artificial lifestyle images looking a bit the same—is an open query.

Although Presti works mainly with mid-sized furniture corporations, it also has a strategic partnership with Maisons du Monde, one in all the largest furniture retailers in France. In addition to Partech, other investors in the startup include Maxime Brousse, Thibaud Elzière, Julien Hirth, Abou Laraki and Rémi Lemonnier.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal is leaving PhonePe’s board

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Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal has stepped down three-quarters from PhonePe’s board after making an identical move on the e-commerce giant.

Bengaluru-based PhonePe said it has appointed Manish Sabharwal, executive director at recruitment and human resources firm Teamlease, as an independent director and chairman of the audit committee.

Bansal played a key role in Flipkart’s acquisition of PhonePe in 2016 and has since served on the fintech’s board. The Walmart-backed startup, which operates India’s hottest mobile payment app, spun off from Flipkart in 2022 and was valued at $12 billion in funding rounds that raised about $850 million last 12 months.

Bansal still holds about 1% of PhonePe. Neither party explained why they were leaving the board.

“I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Binny Bansal for being one of the first and staunchest supporters of PhonePe,” Sameer Nigam, co-founder and CEO of PhonePe, said in a press release. His lively involvement, strategic advice and private mentoring have profoundly enriched our discussions. We will miss Binny!”

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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The company is currently developing washing machines for humans

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Forget about cold baths. Washing machines for people may soon be a brand new solution.

According to at least one Japanese the oldest newspapersOsaka-based shower head maker Science has developed a cockpit-shaped device that fills with water when a bather sits on a seat in the center and measures an individual’s heart rate and other biological data using sensors to make sure the temperature is good. “It also projects images onto the inside of the transparent cover to make the person feel refreshed,” the power says.

The device, dubbed “Mirai Ningen Sentakuki” (the human washing machine of the longer term), may never go on sale. Indeed, for now the company’s plans are limited to the Osaka trade fair in April, where as much as eight people will have the option to experience a 15-minute “wash and dry” every day after first booking.

Apparently a version for home use is within the works.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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Zepto raises another $350 million amid retail upheaval in India

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Zepto, snagging $1 billion in 90 days, projects 150% annual growth

Zepto has secured $350 million in latest financing, its third round of financing in six months, because the Indian high-speed trading startup strengthens its position against competitors ahead of a planned public offering next yr.

Indian family offices, high-net-worth individuals and asset manager Motilal Oswal invested in the round, maintaining Zepto’s $5 billion valuation. Motilal co-founder Raamdeo Agrawal, family offices Mankind Pharma, RP-Sanjiv Goenka, Cello, Haldiram’s, Sekhsaria and Kalyan, in addition to stars Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar are amongst those backing the brand new enterprise, which is India’s largest fully national primary round.

The funding push comes as Zepto rushes so as to add Indian investors to its capitalization table, with foreign ownership now exceeding two-thirds. TechCrunch first reported on the brand new round’s deliberations last month. The Mumbai-based startup has raised over $1.35 billion since June.

Fast commerce sales – delivering groceries and other items to customers’ doors in 10 minutes – will exceed $6 billion this yr in India. Morgan Stanley predicts that this market shall be value $42 billion by 2030, accounting for 18.4% of total e-commerce and a pair of.5% of retail sales. These strong growth prospects have forced established players including Flipkart, Myntra and Nykaa to cut back delivery times as they lose touch with specialized delivery apps.

While high-speed commerce has not taken off in many of the world, the model seems to work particularly well in India, where unorganized retail stores are ever-present.

High-speed trading platforms are creating “parallel trading for consumers seeking convenience” in India, Morgan Stanley wrote in a note this month.

Zepto and its rivals – Zomato-owned Blinkit, Swiggy-owned Instamart and Tata-owned BigBasket – currently operate on lower margins than traditional retail, and Morgan Stanley expects market leaders to realize contribution margins of 7-8% and adjusted EBITDA margins to greater than 5% by 2030. (Zepto currently spends about 35 million dollars monthly).

An investor presentation reviewed by TechCrunch shows that Zepto, which handles greater than 7 million total orders every day in greater than 17 cities, is heading in the right direction to realize annual sales of $2 billion. It anticipates 150% growth over the following 12 months, CEO Aadit Palicha told investors in August. The startup plans to go public in India next yr.

However, the rapid growth of high-speed trading has had a devastating impact on the mom-and-pop stores that dot hundreds of Indian cities, towns and villages.

According to the All India Federation of Consumer Products Distributors, about 200,000 local stores closed last yr, with 90,000 in major cities where high-speed trading is more prevalent.

The federation has warned that without regulatory intervention, more local shops shall be vulnerable to closure as fast trading platforms prioritize growth over sustainable practices.

Zepto said it has created job opportunities for tons of of hundreds of gig employees. “From day one, our vision has been to play a small role in nation building, create millions of jobs and offer better services to Indian consumers,” Palicha said in an announcement.

Regulatory challenges arise. Unless an e-commerce company is a majority shareholder of an Indian company or person, current regulations prevent it from operating on a listing model. Fast trading corporations don’t currently follow these rules.

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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