ViSenze finds fashionable partner in Rakuten

A spin-out from Singapore and Tsinghua’s co-owned research centre NExT, ViSenze, has signed a partnership with Taiwan Rakuten Ichiba (TRI), a subsidiary of Japan-based electronics group Rakuten, to launch a fashion search and recognition service on Rakuten’s Taiwan-based social and shopping sites.

As part of the deal, ViSenze will provide technology to power a fashion finder application which will allow users to find and buy clothing and accessories from uploaded images online through Rakuten’s shopping platforms.

ViSenze was spun-out in 2012 from NUS-Tsinghua Extreme Search Centre (NExT), a research centre jointly established by the National University of Singapore and Tsinghua University. The firm is commercialising online search technology developed at the centre.

Oliver Tan, chief executive of ViSenze, said: “ViSenze aims to unlock the intelligence in visual content and create innovative visual search applications for different businesses across different platforms. We are proud to partner Rakuten and Clozette as they validate the successful application of our technology to the fashion industry. We have started developing new application solutions to other verticals such as automotive and consumer electronics. Additionally, we are developing a contextual visual search driven recommendation engine and expanding our visual based analytics capability.”