Ukrainian startup "Let's Enhance" raised the seed round by $3 million from the young American-Portuguese venture company Chamaeleon.
AI service to improve the quality of Letʼs Enhance photo was launched in autumn 2017 by Ukrainians Sofi Shvets, Vladyslav Pranskevichus, and Oleksandr Savsunenko (left the project shortly).
For several years, they have been developing Letʼs Enhance as a platform for a wide audience - their neural networks have been processing photos for everyone. With the onset of the pandemic, the startup has found a new niche - automatic photo enhancement for marketplaces with large amounts of user content.
The pivot was justified. In 2020, Letʼs Enhance's revenue reached $1 million. In the first nine months of 2021, the company earned the same amount, according to Shvets. The $3 million raised will go entirely to developing the B2B product, the Claid platform, which has been in test mode since June.
Claid - a service for automatic processing of photos that are uploaded to marketplaces. Neural networks adjust images to the required standards: image resolution, smart-croping, resizing, correcting colors , improve brightness, contrast, texture.
We help improve user content quickly and on a large scale.
Sofi Shvets
According to the developers, they used the super-resolution technology of machine learning. The neural network, trained on a large base of real photographs, learns to restore details and keep clear lines and contours, relying on its knowledge of typical objects and textures that exist in the real world.
The company cites “e-commerce, real estate, travel and foodtech marketplaces that work with visuals in high volume†as its main target market.
“We are backing Claid because it brings together a unique trifecta that is rarely found in start-ups these days: technology differentiated approach to a real problem that requires deep technology for its resolution; a practical and scalable go-to-market approach that is underpinned by a solid and innovative product; and a collegial and humble team with very clear superpowers,†says Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Managing Partner and Founder of Chamaeleon.
