- Nikhil Teja Kolli's startup MokSa.ai uses AI-enabled security cameras to curb theft and fraud.
- Since launching a year ago, MokSa.ai has acquired over 70 customers and $240,000 in ARR.
- MokSa.ai has secured $1.5 million in pre-seed funding and aims to scale its business.
When Nikhil Teja Koli was a college student in Kansas, he worked the night shift at a convenience store on the edge of the Ozark River. One night, the man remained in the store until other customers left, then approached the counter with a gun pointed at Koli. The culprit stole the cash from the drawer and left Koli frozen. He felt powerless to stop it.
Eight months later, he would be held at gunpoint again.
Although he had no way of knowing it at the time, Kori would later start a business focused on theft prevention.
His startup MokSa.ai, which aims to help businesses thwart theft and employee fraud using artificial intelligence-enabled security cameras, launched from stealth less than a year ago. Ta. But the company already has many paying customers, which is unusual for a startup of its size. Kolli said his company's real-time monitoring system is used in more than 70 of his gas stations, liquor stores and breweries across the country, generating $20,000 in recurring revenue each month.
Now, this powerful cocktail of machine learning and profit is convincing investors to provide pre-seed funding. MokSa.ai told Business Insider it raised $1.5 million in a March round led by Array Ventures with participation from former Quicken Loans CEO Jay Farner and The Fund Midwest. .
The company uses computer vision to automate some of the surveillance that humans do. The company is building an off-the-shelf security camera that detects suspicious activity (for example, a person stuffing a six-pack of beer into their pants or a cashier handing out items to a friend) and sends real-time notifications to customers. We are developing software for Dashboard. Alerts include clips of incidents, saving business owners time spent replaying hours of camera footage.
Kolli said the company initially tried to use open source pre-trained artificial intelligence models, but found that some of these models exhibited biases that were representative of the datasets they were trained on. It is said that he did. Kohli said he then tried to fine-tune those models, but the performance dropped significantly. In the end, we settled on using a generic model that continuously learns as new footage comes in.
The company also pays college interns in India to watch and annotate footage of suspicious activity. This process is called data labeling.
“As we sit and talk, new data is coming in and these models are improving,” Koli said.
According to Shruti Gandhi, founder and sole general partner of Array Ventures, part of the magic of MokSa.ai lies in its model customized for this use case.
“The datasets we have collected over the past two years as a service company allow us to deploy trained models to our customers from the first week of onboarding,” she said. “Today, that is not possible for many business intelligence companies because most companies think that if they can get customer data, they will be better off. We win because we have access to unique and differentiated data.” ”
Given that MokSa.ai's software works with a variety of internet-connected security cameras, the company has established itself as the Android of the surveillance market. The company also plans to provide businesses with the cameras they need in exchange for multi-year contracts. A monthly subscription is charged based on the number of cameras you use.
For an additional fee, customers can have an operator call them when the system detects an event, which is within MokSa.ai's responsibility, Koli said. I will not contact the police.
“We provide a surveillance audit platform,” he said. “So it's up to the customer to figure out what they want to do with the information we provide.”
Android in the surveillance market
Prior to joining MokSa.ai, Kolli worked as a quality manager for a company that manufactures high-speed rail components. He was inspired to start this company after talking to a friend who owned a gas station and liquor store where he worked during college. When the friend learned that an employee had stolen thousands of dollars worth of merchandise and cash, he asked Koli how he could use technology to catch the bad guys. This idea sowed the seeds of what he later became MokSa.ai.
Kolli then enrolled in the startup accelerator Techstars Detroit, where one of his mentors introduced him to potential investors.
Koli told Gandhi about MokSa.ai over the phone. He had no proposal materials to show her or her other investors, and had made no commitment to move her into action. However, the Array Ventures founder joined the round before the conference call ended. The next day, Cori had a term sheet.
Mr. Gandhi said the investment “was a natural fit.”
The company is currently preparing for growth. MokSa.ai has just signed an agreement with Royal Ozarks, a leading commercial real estate developer in the South, to implement the system in 150 stores. Kolli said the partnership is expected to increase recurring revenue from $240,000 a year to more than $1 million this year.
The new funding will allow the company to expand its sales and customer support teams as part of this expansion. The company is also working on releasing a mobile app that will allow business owners to view notifications on the go.
MokSa.ai, which seeks to develop smarter surveillance systems, joins the likes of architectural security tools maker Verkada, which has raised more than $360 million in funding, and new entrant Rhombus, which just announced $26 million in capital. Facing competition from start-ups. The two companies tout the ability to detect suspicious activity and send alerts, but both require customers to use cameras and sensors.
That could be the wedge that gives MokSa.ai a chance despite being much younger than its competitors.
Gandhi summed it up. “What they're saying is, keep the camera. We'll figure out the best way to use this camera.”
