Bigthinx’s neural networks create a customized 3-d virtual avatar from 2D pictures for groups and consumers
The deeptech fashion startup is looking to input the healthcare and gaming sectors within the destiny to make bigger past style
Bengaluru-based totally Bigthinx recently were given selected as a part of Prada’s maiden style tech accelerator
The contact and feel of offline shopping or the convenience of online buying? Will ecommerce take over physical shops? These are the maximum outstanding questions India’s retail enterprise is considering over nowadays.
Offline retail has a fixed of advantages that on-line retail just can't healthy – shopping revel in, getting a look and sense of products and trials. But the ease of online purchasing has made it a big channel for style merchandise as properly, no matter the reality that the style and garb section has the highest return fee amongst products, and more than 1/2 of them are due to unsatisfactory size.
The advantages of ease, choice and discovery are actually being blended with a excessive-tech method to clear up this big trouble. Clothing size varies noticeably among manufacturers, or even inside unique collections of the same emblem, so it’s very clean to get one’s size wrong. Measurement charts and length suggestions aren’t very powerful as they may be in most cases standard and regularly people forget about them absolutely.
Most ecommerce shops see 30-50% returns on clothing and about 60% of the returns are due to incorrect fit and another 30% are because of the appearance. This is where style tech startup Bigthinx comes into the picture.
Bigthinx’s software efficiently targets these issues with tech intervention and pursuits to combine the benefit and variety of online shopping with the advantages of offline purchasing. The organization makes use of AI to resolve the two largest pain points in online fashion – size and look.
Pivoting From Edtech To Fashion Retail
Bengaluru-based totally Bigthinx started out out as an Edtech employer in 2015 building virtual technological know-how labs for college and university college students where they may perform complete technological know-how experiments in digital reality through VR headsets. Founders Shivang Desai and Chandralika Hazarika even signed up one of the principal school chains in India to start using their software however struggled with getting them to pay and subsequently determined to transport out of the edtech quarter.
“We started out to appearance out for different industries in which our abilties might be leveraged. Fashion retail changed into one such area that caught our interest. It is a dynamic industry with huge potential for improvement in strategies, customer engagement, on-line retail and several other areas,” Desai instructed CFT.
Just remaining year, within the US alone, manufacturers misplaced $284 Bn in ability sales due to on-line apparel returns. Eighty four% of all returns are incinerated or landfilled, which has a massive environmental impact, Desai delivered.
The founders realised that retail is also an enterprise that has visible extraordinarily little innovation, specially in on-line retail. Virtual mirrors in stores for digital strive-ons became popular someplace around 2014-2015, however came with a number of inherent demanding situations – luxurious hardware, connectivity, no information on garb match, and trials in public areas. Furthermore, there has been no way to apply this technology for the swiftly developing ecommerce section.
“This is whilst we had the idea to build a technique for identifying length, healthy, and delivering virtual trials whilst buying on-line to assist clients store better and allow brands to cut charges on unfastened returns,” Desai said
As Bigthinx cofounder Hazarika recalled, “We reached out at the time to the founding father of a fashion unicorn who met with us to percentage his insights. He advised us that his company had previously acquired a US-based totally startup trying to do the same element as us but it in the end didn’t workout. This recommended us as sizing and returns turned into a problem inside the ecommerce area, however shops had just general returns as a fee of doing commercial enterprise. We remained satisfied that the product we have been describing become an absolute necessity for the ecommerce enterprise,” said Hazarika.
Desai and Hazarika created their first prototype in 2017 whilst recognition dawned that, as a small startup, the most effective manner to compete with a number of the prevailing options inside the market was through automatic personalisation and apparel advent.
“It became then that we met Mr Pradeep Guha, the previous president of the Times Group and contemporary CEO of 9X Media. Pradeep turned into completely convinced by way of the imaginative and prescient and joined us as an investor-companion within the undertaking. This become whilst we started building the AI that can make us market leaders in the style match and trials segment,” Hazarika advised us.
The Creation Of Bigthinx’s Walkabout three-D Avatar
In mid-2019, Bigthinx launched a check app of its Lyflike 3-D imaging software to apprehend how users were reacting to and adopting the era. The Lyflike app we could customers to set up a personalised, walkabout 3D avatar and use it for clothing trials. The AI could either vehicle-generate clothing from any 2D image or users ought to layout and attempt on their own garb. The platform could in shape their creations to actual merchandise to be had online.
The app got some thousand downloads and helped the startup form the core capabilities its B2B merchandise. After this test, Lyflike turned into taken down as a B2C app and reshaped right into a B2B product which any on-line retailer should integrate into their own internet site or app.
“In September 2019, we released Lyfsize, an software that consists of out human body scans from smartphone photographs. It at once gained extraordinary interest and has been adopted by clients in Sweden, Finland and India with use cases starting from ecommerce to P2P clothing rentals (Sweden) to modelling expertise groups (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal) to uniforms and workwear (Finland, India),” Desai introduced.
Bigthinx founders explained the alternative packages of the Lyfsize software
Working with an upcoming skills company for the style enterprise, Bigthinx is positioning its platform because the future of favor skills and generation. This collaboration enables models get body measurements the usage of just their smartphones so that event organisers may have garb customised for them ahead of time. It also prevents the human mistakes that arise whilst humans degree themselves.
Uniforms and Workwear
Workwear and uniforms shape a important requirement for plenty organizations, especially from a branding and consistency factor of view. Large companies need to design uniforms in keeping with their workforces round the arena, adapting to the various cultural needs of each geography. Not most effective does the Lyfsize utility let them keep time and labour costs, however additionally offers get right of entry to to records that’s very useful in future decisions.
Mass Customisation
Another advantage of cell body scanning is it offers information beyond simply frame measurements. Body shape facts can be extensively interpreted to allow apparel manufacturers to deliver mass customisation, intermediate sizes and optimise production in line with their target audience.
Going Back To The Consumers
Bigthinx’s Lyfsize and Lyflike AI software not best determine particular body dimensions however additionally fits users with their best size for any brand, presenting information on in shape, glide and cloth movement. It allows them to peer how clothing looks on a 3D digital, walkabout avatar that looks and measures precisely just like the person. Naturally, one would anticipate the customer-facet packages for this tech to flourish, but that’s nonetheless nascent within the retail global.
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In the offline space too, purchasers can use monitors or drugs in bodily stores to name up their very own avatar and immediately absolutely strive on hundreds of different outfits and combos with out attempt. This is specifically beneficial in sale-season while shops are overcrowded and features for dressing rooms are limitless, and also for stores specialising in ethnic wear in which attempting on more than one clothes would be a bulky and arduous experience. So simply, there is a market for this product within the patron aspect.
The 3D body scan achieved by means of Lyfsize the usage of handiest one’s phone gives forty four different body measurements with over 95% accuracy. For reference, that is more correct than maximum expert tailors.The Lyfsize (3D frame scanning) product operates on a B2B2C model whereby the startup licenses or white-labels the app to retailers and that they distribute it to clients.
For the B2B version, Bigthinx’s Lyflike APIs are integrated into etailer web sites or apps and allow actual-time apparel trials for purchasers.
“We have thus far partnered with on line shops in ecommerce, bespoke style, fashion leases, uniforms manufacturers, and style skills platforms. One such platform is InchStreet, which is an online aggregator of fellows’s bespoke apparel providers, wherein you'll pick out one’s suiting and styling desires and feature it created through the issuer of 1’s choice,” said Desai.
For InchStreet, it was imperative to get accurate frame measurements and that they chose to apply Lyfsize to put off inaccuracies in measurements. Customers in India had disparate measurements due to geographical and cultural differences. Bigthinx standardised measurements and helped Inchstreet overcome this boundaries.
The startup’s products are priced as SaaS models based at the predicted slab utilization and billed on a recurring rate. This allows us to serve various patron corporations ranging from big e-trade agencies to impartial designers.
“For fast style ecommerce structures, our AI automates the garb digitisation method and can realistically automobile-create as much as a hundred% of menswear and between 60-80% of womenswear (relying at the complexity) in a count of a hours,” Hazarika told us.
This extends to catalogues ranging as much as millions of SKUs. “When in comparison to the present techniques of digitising apparel – 3-D modelers or 3D scanners – our gadget is hugely faster and cheaper, permitting almost complete catalogues to be newly digitized whenever seasons and patterns alternate,” she stated.
The Prada Cohort And Future Plans
Bigthinx become invited to Milan via Startup Bootcamp (SBC), one of the international’s biggest accelerator networks, to take part inside the selection procedure for its maiden style tech accelerator. The accelerator’s foremost associate is Prada at the side of several different heavyweights together with Sopra Steria, Accenture, PwC and others. Having already screened over 1200 style tech startups, which include loads of in-individual conferences around the sector, Bigthinx became many of the top 20 contenders invited to Milan.
“They reached out to us simplest two weeks before the main occasion and advised us to make a experience to Milan for the four-day choice occasion as they believed we had the proper generation to fulfill the wishes in their companions inside the fashion industry. After a variety of discussions with our advisors and also VCs, who endorsed us to wait, we decided to participate,” said Desai.
In Milan, the startup pitched and demoed merchandise to over 150 programme mentors, consisting of the owner and top management of Prada. Bigthinx is the only corporation from India to be selected and may be operating intently with the programme’s companions from January 2020 onwards.
“Over the next 12 months, our plan is to work with the world-main luxurious manufacturers which we've get admission to to which includes Prada, Sopra Steria and others, in addition to to set up our products into ecommerce web shops in Europe with the learnings we derive,” stated Hazarika.
As Bigthinx’s products are pure software program portions, the startup has the ability to scale its patron base unexpectedly. Their plan is to accumulate numerous major European ecommerce gamers as paying customers inside the next few months, after which their points of interest are set a the US.
The expansion plan is to go into every geography with properly-established neighborhood companions which have huge and deep atmosphere knowledge, connections and current networks. In the subsequent two years, Bigthinx expects to serve big purchaser bases for fashion merchandise in the US, Europe and some different Asian markets.
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It is likewise deploying the Lyfsize software program in health studios to permit users to music frame changes and fitness risks, and take suitable path corrections. Over the course of the subsequent 3 years, Bigthinx plans to diversify into the healthcare and gaming sectors.
“Our aggressive area lies in a aggregate of numerous components – consciousness on automation, constant innovation, defensible IP, pace and agility. Staying beforehand of the curve in all of those factors is what's going to preserve us aggressive in the years to come,” Desai stated.
Correction Note: Some sections of this text had been edited publish-publishing to restoration typographical errors and improve readability of language.
