Eyedeus Labs

Technologies for Vision, Augmented Reality and Human Computer Interaction

Eyedeus

Table of Contents
Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................................ 2 1 THE COMPANY AND PRODUCT .......................................................................... 3 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 3 4 3.1 4.1 4.2 5 5.1 5.2 5.3 6 7 8 Overview .............................................................................................................. 3 Business Model .................................................................................................... 3 The Product .......................................................................................................... 4 Entry and Growth Strategy................................................................................... 5 Customers ............................................................................................................. 6 Market Size .......................................................................................................... 7 Competition and Competitive Edges.................................................................... 7 Marketing Strategy ............................................................................................... 8 Five year projection summary ............................................................................ 11 Overall Marketing Strategy ................................................................................ 11 Distribution......................................................................................................... 11 Development Status and Tasks .......................................................................... 11 Difficulties and Risks ......................................................................................... 12 Product Improvement and New Products........................................................... 12

MARKET RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS ............................................................... 6

FINACIAL STATEMENTS ..................................................................................... 10 MARKETING PLAN ............................................................................................... 11

DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT PLANS .............................................................. 11

MANUFACTURING AND OPERATIONS PLAN ................................................ 13 MANAGEMENT TEAM ......................................................................................... 13 OVERALL SCHEDULE .......................................................................................... 13

Eyedeus Labs is a LUMS based startup developing Computer Vision technologies for mobile devices particularly enabling technologies for Augmented Reality and Human Computer Interaction. The core team has over 20 years combined experience in Computer Vision related R&D and is currently associated with Computer Vision Lab, LUMS. We have already developed several components of our vision technology and demonstrated its potential though our first product Groopic which allows users to take a group photo which includes the photographer. A first demonstration of the solution won the Best Startup Award at Startup Weekend Lahore in February, 2012. It has, since then, been converted to a fast and stable application for the iOS platform, which is planned to be launched in the festival season this year.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The product: The currently software development industry lack computer vision expertise and we aim to bridge this gap through our vision library. Our main product will be core computer vision technologies for smartphones on which we will develop range of utility, service and entertainment applications. Our first proof of concept application is Groopic that allows users to take a group photo which includes the photographer. It solves, for the first time, the age-old problem that one member of a group the photographer cannot be part of the photo so traditional group photos were always incomplete. The application automatically combines two such incomplete group photos with different people missing each time into one complete photo of the group. Target Market There are about 1.08 billion smartphone users in the world. Initially, we are targeting young user on iOS the most prominent smartphone platform. This makes the size of our target market 133.28 million users (calculations based on the 2011 statistics). Even 20% of this number means a user base of 26.7 million. We are anticipating an initial adoption of our free application by around 1.2 million during the first year. Startup Costs We have incurred $12,000 in developing our initial prototype during the final quarter of fiscal year 2012. We anticipate future expenses of $32,000 in launching and initial marketing of two applications in first year. Another $40,000 expenses at minimum are expected in the first year for patenting the developed technologies. This makes the total cost of $72,000, which is required by the team. Payoff Eyedeus Labs expects break even within the second quarter of the first year and approximately 7X return on investment within the first year on this product. We expect to expand by developing additional products ideas included in the subsequent years. The exit strategy would be a merger/acquisition with a larger competitor in the Augmented Reality space by acquiring a large user base, developing IP through R&D and product development. Management Team Our team has a combined experience of over 20 years in research and development. The co-founders include Ali Rehan and Abdul Rehman (MS CS graduates) on application development and testing; Aamer Zaheer (Senior PhD student) and Dr. Murtaza Taj (Assistant Professor) on product prototyping, R&D and quality assurance while Shehryar Hydri (COO Trango Interactive, Co-founder at Scrybe) is the technical advisor. 2

1 THE COMPANY AND PRODUCT

1.1 Overview
Eyedeus Labs is a company founded by a group of Computer Vision researchers from School of Science & Engineering, Lahore University of Management Sciences. We have worked on maturing core Computer Vision research particularly targeting Augmented Reality (AR) and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) technologies with applied perspective. With a vast experience in Computer Vision, Image Processing, and 3D Reconstruction, we aim to develop various stable and efficient algorithms for embedded devices. Several computer vision based utility and entertainment applications can then be develop these platforms. Our first application, called Groopic grabbed us the Best Startup Award at Startup Weekend Lahore, in February 2012. Since then, we have tested and improved the application and now we have a fast and stable prototype ready for the iOS platform. The Groopic application lets users take group photos including the photographer in just three clicks. The key pain point that this application addresses is the fact that whenever people want to take a group photo, they either need an extra non-group person to take the photograph or a camera with tripod. Both of these scenarios limit the users ability to preserve their memories because, either, one of the group members is always missing in that memorable picture while tripod is not a very portable piece of equipment. Groopic solves this problem by combining the portability of a smart phone with the state-ofthe-art in the Computer Vision research. Other avenues that we aim to address through our core technologies is HCI based gaming where user can do various moves within the game by moving its head or face direction or even by just using blink of eyes. We aim to develop new verticals in mobile applications through our core competency of Computer Vision which can make us market leader of HCI based gaming and augmented sharing.

1.2 Business Model

Augmented Reality (AR) and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is one of the most intriguing fields in the technology today. A lot of companies including the technology giants Google (with their Google Glass) and Qualcomm (with their AR SDK) are investing in the field. This points to the overall trend of the market towards such applications and hardware. Many Computer Vision based solutions, including the applications in AR and HCI, only requires a camera and a processor. One of the best combinations of the two is present in virtually everyones pocket today in the form of a smart phone. It is estimated that there are about 1.08 billion smart phones in the market today which is a huge market to work for. With our key expertise and experience in the field of computer vision, we at Eyedeus Labs, have set out to develop computer vision technologies for the Smart Phones. To monetize our vision library we will be developing several utility and entertainment application. One of the first applications that we are developing is Group Photo. Group photo will be helpful for everybody who cannot capture the memorable moments with all the people in one picture, if they do not have an extra person or a camera with tripod. This is a scenario faced very frequently by friends out for picnic, a couple on honeymoon and a father on trekking with his youngest son etc. Group photo will be useful to people in such conditions. We intend to generate profits by both giving a version of application with ads for free and some paid in-app upgrades which rid user of the ads on screen and provide additional features. After the 3

launch of the first product, the research team will continue working on extending library with additional functionalities and on prototypes of future applications.

1.3 The Product

Eyedeus Labs aims to develop a computer vision library consisting of reusable functions which enables series of augmented reality and human computer interaction algorithms for application developers. This library will then be used to introduce a new genre of computer vision in computational photography, Games and utility applications. Several functionalities of this library are already developed and tested through prototype applications. These functionalities include image blending, stitching and alignment. Our proof of concept application is in computational photography category and its called Group Photo. It is an application that lets users take group photos in which photographers are also present in just three clicks. It solves a very unique problem that many people around the globe face on a daily basis, where there have to be either two pictures of same group (with two people switching the job of taking picture) or a single picture in which one member is missing. It is a challenging problem to solve and our solution is the very first in the market. The application is in the final stages of development - with a stable prototype available - and will be ready to launch in a month.

Figure 1: Group Photo example results. (Col 1) Typical Group Photo scenario of 4 friends on atourist spot. (Col 2 & 3) Further interesting scenarios obtained from the same app without any modification. Row 3 shows the group photo produced from two images in row 1 and row 2 in each column respectively.

Figure 2: Splash Screen and home screen

Figure 3: Screenshots of the Group Photo application. First image (left) is taken by tapping on the screen. Middle shows the process of taking the second image while the first image is overlaid on the screen to help with alignment. The result computed automatically - is shown on the right. The user then moves on to additional options like editing/sharing the image. Note the possibility of going back to the previous step at any point in time, adding to the usability.

After the marketing, launch and initial post-launch support of Group Photo on iOS platform we will work in two parallel teams. First team will aim at launching add-ons for Group Photo and its Android Version. Group Photo add-ons include Group Again and Group Panorama. Group Again will allow users to group photos that are already taken in the past. Group Panorama will enable users to take continuous group photos by sliding the cameras in any desired direction. The second team will collaborate with game developers to produce HCI enabled mobile games. This team will particularly focus on introducing interaction between human face and game controls. Functionalities such as face pose estimate, gaze direction and eye blink events will be exposed to game developers. These games will allow users to experience a more immersive game play by using facial movements for actions and interactions.

1.4 Entry and Growth Strategy

We will first develop applications using our vision library. These applications will then be launched on iOS and Android Platforms through App Store and Google Play respectively. These market places provide instant access to millions of users. The fun and entertainment aspect of our products is aimed towards capturing the interest of youth and teenagers who are the major contributors of photos on any social network. Since there are already over 5 million applications on these market places, this makes marketing a very important aspect for a smartphone app in order to introduce it to potential users. We intend to secure 5

product endorsement through early adopters and tech blogs as a source of word of mouth marketing for our target market. We will attract users through aggressive advertising and promotional campaigns and social networking channels. In order to retain and increase the user-base, we plan to continually develop and introduce new and compelling features in our products. We also intend to explore possibilities of bundling our products with multiple add-ons to provide an economical package to the user for multiple apps and their features. Another interesting direction to pursue is by having the computational photography applications such as Group Photo feature built right into camera. After launching it on iPhone and Android, we plan to directly contact major camera manufactures for providing a version of app as an feature of camera applications running on various cameras such as those from Sony, Olympus, Nikon and Panasonic. Similarly, mobile phone manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Nokia can also add our application as a built-in feature in their camera app just like RIM (Research in Motion Blackberry smartphones) has started adding computational photography features to their native camera application. Once we develop a significant user-base and realize capital gains from our user-base, we hope to get acquired by a leading seller of competing or related products.

2 MARKET RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

2.1 Customers
Our core product is vision library and applications build on top of this library. We do not plan to license our technology to developers instead we aim to reach the application users directly by in-house development of applications. This makes application users as our main customers. The social perspective of our computational photography and augmented sharing products makes every smartphone user our potential customer. The unique problem that our product solves makes it particularly attractive for tourists. For e.g. every group of tourist could be a potential customer of group photo. Anyone looking for fun and entertainment there is a lot they can gain from our various Photo apps including Group Photo and Augmented Tattoo.

Figure 4: Market Segmentation (image source: www.puremobile.com)

2.2 Market Size

There are about 1.08 Billion Smartphone users in the world. This number increases by about 61.3% every year. Since the market is fragmented into multiple platforms we will initially target only users with iOS based devices because they allow for easier quality assurance and higher spending rate of iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod) users. These devices constitute approx. 30% of the total smartphones which is equivalent to 324 Million users. We are targeting our apps towards youth which is approximately 43% of the total iOS users. This makes the size of our target market 139.32 Million users. Even 2% of this number means a user base of 2.79 Million.

2.3 Competition and Competitive Edges

The field of Digital Image Processing is all about generating perceptually correct images. Even a minute error creates clearly visible artifacts defeating the whole idea of augmented reality. There are several groups within mobile application development community that are trying to produce Augmented Reality related products. However, the current market survey suggests that most of them can only do very limited work as they lack the required expertise in Computer Vision and Augmented Reality. Similarly, for HCI based games to be successful, the technology component should be robust enough that user can interact seamlessly without even realizing that it is done via front camera of smartphone. Our competitive advantage over others is our extensive research and development experience in the area of Computer Vision and Augmented Reality. The three senior members in our team co-advise a lab full of over 20 researchers including undergraduate and graduate students as well as full time Research Assistants. Additionally, many interesting ideas can be demonstrated through the course projects in half a dozen specialized courses being offered by the lab. Our first product, Group Photo, is the first solution for the users specific problem which lends us the early movers advantage over our potential competition. Given that the problem is very challenging and the technical expertise needed to reverse engineer our solution or come up with a new solution will 7

make sure that most of the development firms are at a serious disadvantage. This allows us a reasonable window at least six months to establish ourselves as the market leader for this particular problem.

2.4 Marketing Strategy

We plan to spend $2000 during the post launch period to create the hype of the app and additional $5000 at the time of app Launch to give initial boost to our sales. Once the app start receiving user traction, we plan to spend significant portion of our profits on marketing. The estimated marketing budget during the post-launch period is around $15,000 to $20,000 per month to acquire users. We aim to increase our marketing through the social networking aspect of our application. After capturing the image, user would be able to share the pictures instantly on the social media like Facebook, twitter etc. This would also act as a marketing strategy for us. All the photos would be shared through the Group Photo Facebook application, which will attract other users too. Since our app belongs to the photography category it requires only 3,100 downloads a day for free app and 2,700 downloads a day for a paid version of an app to reach top 25 app category as shown below:

Figure 5: Image credits: http://www.insidemobileapps.com

Figure 6: Image credits: http://www.insidemobileapps.com

Given the social aspect of our app we believe that these targets are well within our reach. We will base our experience from the sales of Group Photo to devise a strategy for marketing our HCI based game applications. In gaming category we will also gain from the experience of our collaborator i.e. Mind Storm Studios.

3 FINACIAL STATEMENTS
The financial statement give below is based on one app launch only which will be Group Photo App that we plan to Launch by holiday season. Moreover, the office space, marketing and legal support that we expect from PITBPlan 9 is also taken into considerations.
M1 App sales Op. Expenses HR Launch & Marketing Equipment Patent & IP Office Expenses Legal Op. P/L Apple/Android Share Taxes @ 35% Net Profit/Loss Assumptions Unit Price Downloads Sales $0.00 0 $0 $0.00 0 $0 $0.00 200,000 $0 $1.99 100,000 $199,000 $1.99 50,000 $99,500 $1.99 100,000 $199,000 $1.99 100,000 $199,000 $1.99 100,000 $199,000 $1.99 300,000 $597,000 $1.99 300,000 $597,000 $1.99 250,000 $497,500 $1.99 250,000 $497,500 1 ,750,000 $3,084,500 $(6,500) $(2,135) $(60,135) $129,165 $54,515 $124,165 $118,465 $118,465 $397,065 $397,065 $327,415 $327,415 $4,000 $0 $6,500 $0 $0 $0 $(6,500) $4,000 $2,000 $135 $0 $0 $0 $(2,135) $4,000 $5,000 $135 $40,000 $0 $15,000 $(60,135) $4,000 $10,000 $135 $0 $0 $0 $188,865 $4,000 $15,000 $135 $0 $0 $0 $84,365 $4,000 $15,000 $135 $0 $0 $0 $183,865 $4,000 $20,000 $135 $0 $700 $0 $178,165 $4,000 $20,000 $135 $0 $700 $0 $178,165 $4,000 $20,000 $135 $0 $700 $0 $576,165 $4,000 $20,000 $135 $0 $700 $0 $576,165 $4,000 $20,000 $135 $0 $700 $0 $476,665 $4,000 $20,000 $135 $0 $700 $0 $476,665 $48,000 $167,000 $7,990 $40,000 $4,200 $15,000 $2,802,310 $0 M2 $0 M3 $0 M4 $199,000 M5 $99,500 M6 $199,000 M7 $199,000 M8 $199,000 M9 $597,000 M10 $597,000 M11 $497,500 M12 $497,500 Y1 $3,084,500

$0

$0

$0

$59,700

$29,850

$59,700

$59,700

$59,700

$179,100

$179,100

$149,250

$149,250

$925,350 $656,936 $1,220,024

It should be noted that in month 3 we are expecting a loss of over $60,000. This loss is due to increased legal, marketing and patenting expenses for which we need support and network of PITB Plan 9. 10

3.1 Five year projection summary

Total Download Total Revenue Op. Expenses Op. P/L Apple/Android Comm. Taxes Net P/L Y1 1,750,000 $3,084,500 $282,190 $2,802,310 $925,350 $656,936 $1,220,024 Y2 1,925,000 $3,392,950 $315,500 $3,077,450 $1,017,885 $720,848 $1,338,717 Y3 2,117,500 $3,732,245 $362,190 $3,370,055 $1,119,674 $787,634 $1,462,748 Y4 2,329,250 $4,105,470 $419,253 $3,686,217 $1,231,641 $859,101 $1,595,474 Y5 2,562,175 $4,516,016 $486,942 $4,029,075 $1,354,805 $935,995 $1,738,276

4 MARKETING PLAN
4.1 Overall Marketing Strategy
The marketing strategy for iOS apps includes following standard components: 1. Introductory Video & interactive tutorial 2. Website 3. Tech Blogging: By contacting pre-identified tech-bloggers directly 4. Social Media Campaign: through specialized marketing firms We plan to accompany our product with a video presentation/demo. A professionally done video and graphics can significantly increase chances of success. We will also be exploiting social networking media such as Facebook and Twitter as well as Tech Blogs to maximize the word of mouth marketing strategy and to create a viral effect.

4.2 Distribution
Our Apps will be distributed through Apples App Store and subsequently through Google Play for Android based apps.

5 DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT PLANS

5.1 Development Status and Tasks
We are in the final stages of development of our first product called Group Photo. Major portions of the development phase that includes prototyping and proof of concept trails on iOS is completed. Performance enhancement of app to handle higher resolution images is also done. This gives us a leading edge over all other competing apps which only work at low-resolutions only. Additionally we have built-in easy sharing options directly through the app. We are now working on improving user experience by generating instantaneous results, ease of navigation through app and in providing more attractive graphics. We intend to complete these tasks including product testing in 1 month time. The core technology components developed for our first app are then combined with additional functionalities for HCI. Particularly facial movement and expression recognition algorithms will be developed. These functionalities will be combined into a reusable library for HCI enabled games. To 11

gain early entry into gaming industry we plan to collaborate with one of the local games development house.

5.2 Difficulties and Risks

The major difficulty that we face is the lack of marketing expertise, initial marketing budget and IP and patenting cost. We are seeking advice from professional experts in the app development market. We are looking to hire services of a studio for a quick and professionally done advertisement video. In parallel, we intend to bring on board, a business & marketing expert who will be responsible for executing our market strategy and building a marketing team. We expect that many of these resources will be available to us via PITB Plan 9 platform.

5.3 Product Improvement and New Products

We are planning various improvements as well as feature additions for our app Group Photo. Moreover, we have a plan for launching range of augmented reality applications and their add-ons and upgrades over the next 1 years. The snap shot of our road map is shown in Figure 7 and is discussed next. Our main focus for the first Qtr of Year 1 is our Groopic app which is under testing these days and we are working on its marketing side. Immediately after its release we will focus on releasing its add-ons to increase our profits through in app purchases. Two add-ons will be released during Qtr 2 and Qtr 3 of first year namely Group Again and Group Panorama. At the same time we plan to improve our vision library by introducing functionalities for facial analysis.

Groopic on iOS Groopic Add-ons & HCI

Basic Features

Support for iOS App Android App & HCI Group Again Support for iOS App Face detection & tracking at Group Panorama low latency Groopic Android App Face pose estimation Blink detection HCI based game

Figure 7: Road Map showing various milestones, launch of apps and add-ons as well as expansion and reinvestment strategy

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6 MANUFACTURING AND OPERATIONS PLAN

We are a traditional garage startup at the moment and planning to run that way until we raise substantial investment/revenue. Startup incubation, rent, utilities and stipend is already covered by PITB Plan 9. We are highly hopeful that it will pan out because of many factors including our Award Winning performance at the only entrepreneurial event organized at LUMS.

7 MANAGEMENT TEAM
Eyedeus Labs is a company founded by group of Computer Vision experts from School of Science & Engineering, Lahore University of Management Sciences. Ali Rehan: Ali, an MS candidate in Computer Science at LUMS has been involved in multiple successful startups including chOpaal, the largest SMS based social network of the Pakistan. He has also worked with SATUMA Pakistan for development of Computer Vision based products for UAVs. He will be working as a lead developer. Abdul Rehman Naeem: Abdul Rehman, an MS candidate in Computer Science at LUMS has also been working with SATUMA Pakistan for development of Computer Vision based products. He will also be working as a lead developer. Aamer Zaheer: Aamer, a final year PhD candidate in Computer Science at LUMS brings a stellar research experience of over 8 years in state of the art Computer Vision technologies. His main role in the team is prototyping key technologies and new product ideas. Murtaza Taj: Murtaza, Assistant Professor in Computer Science (CS) department at LUMS has done his PhD in Computer Science and Electronics Engineering in 2009. He brings a combination of research experience in Digital Image Processing and proposal writing skills. He will be sharing the role of prototyping key technologies and new product ideas. Shehryar Hydri: Shehryar is a COO of Trango Interactive and Co-Founder of Scrybe. He has done his Masters in Business Administration from IBA, Karachi and then M. Phil in Islamic Economics from IIU, Islamabad. Shehryar has a vast experience as a Co-Founder of multiple startups including iTrango, Scrybe and Mystic two of which are still doing good business. Shehryar has also experience in product branding and marketing and he is working with the team in an advisor role.

8 OVERALL SCHEDULE
We have already prototyped multiple functionalities of our vision library and our first application is in the alpha testing and User Experience design phase. In the meanwhile, we are preparing our marketing strategy and launch planning. Our post launch plan includes enhancing library functionalities along with maintenance and upgrade of the iOS app and development of the Android based app (which has also been demonstrated).

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