Welcoming Facesoft to FinTech Connect!

Facesoft is an innovative, SaaS start-up, providing facial identification and verification solutions in the security, banking and access control markets, via a cloud-based API solution. The company’s face recognition algorithms have been found to be amongst the best in the world, with accuracy levels of greater than 98%.

Year Founded: 2017

How did the idea for the business originate?

Allan Ponniah, an NHS plastic surgeon (and now CEO,) was designing ways to reconstruct faces for children with facial deformities. He needed a wide variety of faces to design the ideal facial model for a specific child who needed reconstructive surgery.

He got in touch with Dr Stefanos Zafeiriou, a reader of Machine Learning and Computer Vision at Imperial College who helped him develop a realistic 3D model. The powerful technology that was required for this project was then found to be applicable for many other areas such as face recognition. The combined skills and new software then presented a great opportunity to commercialise.

Do you have customers yet? If not, how far into your business lifecycle are you?

We have experienced rapid growth with our revenue approaching just under a million in our first year of operation. The AI industry is an exciting sector for a start-up to be in because it is experiencing rapid growth and by 2030, it is predicted to contribute around £15.7tr to the global economy.

How have you funded your growth to date?

Not only do we have seed funding from a combination of angel and VC investors but we also receive a great amount of guidance and industry expertise from our investors, which has helped Facesoft rapid growth and R&D.    

What would a successful year look like for you?

Continued R&D in the next year is imperative for Facesoft to continue developing its industry leading technology. Further rapid expansion and establishing ourselves en route to being the number one facial recognition vendor in security and banking, will be a significant milestone within the next 12 months.

Outside of your own business, which start up do you admire the most and why?

Part of our offices are located in the Translation and Innovation Hub in White City. Facesoft is surrounded by a number of innovative start-ups as well as fast-growth companies, including Fintechs and Biotechs. It is difficult to choose from the plethora of ingenious businesses, however as a surgeon, Precision Robotics is a business I strongly admire.

They are focused on developing medical robots to automate colorectal oncology surgeries and are an example of a business which were developed to help improve the lives of patients and those working in the medical field.

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