Ex-Funding Societies CTO launches YC-backed ecommerce AI startup

Ishan Agrawal / Photo credit: Ishan Agrawal/LinkedIn

Ishan Agrawal, ex-CTO of fintech firm Funding Societies, is taking on a new frontier with his new startup: AI.

He has co-founded Branch AI along with former Twitter engineers Govind Chandrasekhar and Praveen Sekar. Backed by Y Combinator, Branch AI is an ecommerce-focused platform that uses large language models (LLMs) and other related tech.

The company highlights that one of the current challenges in ecommerce is the shift toward more conversational search queries. However, many retailers and brands still use keyword search tools, resulting in lost revenue for more specific queries.

Branch AI provides several tools, including those that enhance the quality of tail queries, boost search relevance, and analyze search queries.

These tools can reduce operational complexity and costs associated with search tuning, as well as enhance conversion for long-tail, low-click, and zero-result queries, the company said.

“You don’t need large teams and endless tuning anymore,” explained Agrawal in a LinkedIn post. “Our AI models understand product catalogs and user intents, and automatically tune search relevance.”

Before joining Branch AI’s founding team in July 2023, Agrawal had served at Singapore-based Funding Societies for seven years. He was appointed as the company’s CTO in 2020 until eventually resigning to establish Branch AI.

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