Startup Spotlight: Tech Startup CamCom Is Aiming To Ease The Process Of Visual Inspections Through AI-Powered Automation The CamCom model leverages the field of computer vision to visually inspect for damages or defects in completed products.
By Aalia Mehreen Ahmed Edited by Aby Thomas
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This article is part of an ongoing series covering startups that have been a part of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Innovation Fund (MBRIF) accelerator program.
Did you know that 63% of industrial products made globally use either metal, plastic, and/ or glass as a base product? Well, that is the claim made by Ajith Nayar, co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of industry-agnostic, artificial intelligence-powered platform CamCom, based on research carried out by his team. And it is a statistic that, in many ways, influences his tech startup's operations.
Launched in 2017 in the Indian city of Bengaluru, CamCom set up a new base at the Dubai Digital Park in January 2021. Its core mission is simple: to assess and monitor any defects or damages of metal, plastic, and/or glass in industries that are overly dependent on these materials. Currently, the startup caters to the automotive, warehousing, aircraft, pharma, and gas cylinder industries. "The platform is built on a computer vision (CV) stack," explains Nayar. "The solution is deployed on bespoke rigs for micro defect assessment and mobile device cameras for macro damage assessment."
To put it more simply, the CamCom model leverages the field of computer vision -a branch of artificial intelligence (AI) that enables computers to garner high-level understanding from digital images or videos- to visually inspect for damages or defects in completed products. Clients are charged per inspection, while the platform also offers a monthly subscription model for more frequent users. "We are a platform-as-a-service, and the solution is 100% cloud-native, and invoked as an application program interface," Nayar explains. "We offer automation as well to complement our defect/damage assessment, so that the solution is holistic."
The automation that Nayar alludes to here is intended to reduce labor-intensive hours. But it also takes away two factors that perhaps most industries would want to negate: margins of error, and time invested in quality control. Take, for example, its work in the automotive industry, where CamCom offers services to check for flaws in vehicles during the manufacturing process as well as in the automotive aftermarket. In the manufacturing and logistics industry, CamCom's AI-powered micro defect inspections and analytics offer a real-time pass/fail control, as well as the ability to optimize the overall process by creating a digital passport of a given vehicle's condition.
Source: CamCom
The platform also assists vehicle component suppliers and original equipment manufacturers to trace the underlying reasons behind any defects in order to avoid costly recalls or defective vehicles being sold into the market. In the automotive aftermarket, however, CamCom's inspections take on a macro-level role, where its AI-powered contactless solutions create visual audit trails during asset inspections and upsell opportunities at service centers, among others. These varied offerings explain why Nayar insists his startup has a very holistic operational approach. But when asked what he believes is the main unique selling point of his business, he says, "We are pioneers in this technology, and as our many customers will attest, the most accurate and scalable CV platform. The fact that we don't require any proprietary hardware for macro-damage assessment makes the solution extremely cost-effective."
A startup of 43 people, CamCom has already raised a pre-Series A round and is currently in talks to follow it up with a Series A that will allow it to expand into Europe, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region. "We intend to be a US$1 billion revenue company in 5-7 years," Nayar adds. "CamCom will be the "most real-world relevant' computer vision-as-a-service company in the world by then!" And it is to aid its global ambitions that the company has set up shop in the UAE, which came about after Nayar and his team attended the GITEX Technology Week in 2020. "As a technology platform that is industry-agnostic and extensible, it was imperative that we accelerate our growth quickly," he says. "The UAE was an automatic choice, given The deep tech penetration enabling ecosystem, and a market that has always been early adopters of tech-enabled business transformation."
Speaking about his company's participation in the MBRIF accelerator program, Nayar has no qualms about acknowledging the entity's role in furthering CamCom's operations in the UAE. "MBRIF is, without doubt, the preeminent program for startups wishing to enter the market," he declares. "It offers a smorgasbord of services to pick and choose that enable a faster time to market for companies entering the region."
With the UAE providing a strong foundation for the enterprise, Nayar says that CamCom will remain focused on a singular factor to stand out in the industries it operates in. "Innovation is the lifeblood of CamCom," Nayar explains. "We have a vision lab that is constantly pushing the boundaries of vision technologies to make sure that we stay ahead of the curve. We will be setting up a lab in Dubai as well to make sure that the solutions are in tune with the requirements of the market."
