Flipkart’s research arm developing AI-based products

F7 Labs, the research arm of Flipkart based out of US, is focusing on building artificial intelligence-based products to help the Indian ecommerce giant improve business processes and customer interactions. The team is working on creating a model to determine which products get returned the most, to build a more cost-effective way to manage those returns, and has automated the moderation of the comments and product reviews that appear on the site.

Mihir Naware, Director at F7 labs, elaborated that “Given the scope of the opportunity to deploy artificial intelligence solutions to an ecommerce market like India, we are looking to grow the lab. There are Indian expats in the Valley who we think would be interested in working on the large data sets that we have at Flipkart”. He further added that F7 labs aren’t affected by the recent changes in company’s strategy, he stated that “There is an understanding at Flipkart that, to deliver at scale we will need artificial intelligence and that the Valley is the place where the cutting-edge research is being done. We talked to the CEO after he took over and there was a lot of encouragement. In that sense, we are slightly isolated from the changes”.

The lab not only develops the models to improve company’s efficiency, but also focuses on analyzing the specifications of the products which are the top-sellers, forecasting future sale and other machine learning activities.