Before Kaagaz Scanner's success, these techies had built a solid AI tool

Sorted AI is led by the mission to bring AI to tailor-made applications for millions of Indians. And it is now at an inflection point

The Chinese app ban on June 30 has had many beneficiaries. The biggest were social upstarts like Chingari and Mitron, which thrived in the absence of TikTok, though utility apps also gained momentum. One such was Kaagaz Scanner, a mobile-based document scanning tool which filled the gap CamScanner left vacant.

Kaagaz Scanner was only 15 days old when people scrambling to find CamScanner alternatives landed at its door. The result: through July the application was downloaded 850,000 times. However, before it became fashionable to build for India – through campaigns like Vocal for Local – the entrepreneurs behind Kaagaz Scanner were already building utilities tailor-made for Indians. 

Since early 2019, Snehanshu Gandhi, Tamanjit Bindra and Gaurav Shrishrimal have been running a company called Sorted AI, from Gurugram. Its mission was to introduce Indians to useful applications of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Take its first product for instance. Eponymously called ‘Sorted AI’, the application helps users store and manage important documents like insurance papers, ID proof and bills, and retrieve them when necessary. 

It’s no ordinary cloud-based storage solution. The app uses AI to retrieve things like policy number, expiry date, holder’s name, and other information from the document’s scanned copies. It can automatically fetch the documents from emails, categorise them, and show up the papers when the user searches through a keyword. It can also set reminders for when a policy is about to expire or a credit card payment is due.

Before starting Sorted AI, Gandhi, 35, and Shrishrimal, 28, had founded Tapp Me, an on-demand services start-up on the lines of UrbanClap, in 2015. Bindra was the first hire in the company. Tapp Me pooled technicians like plumbers and electricians for bookings in tier-II cities only. However, the start-up had to fold in 2019 due to paucity of funds.

“As we built out the company, we realised the positive impact it had on the society,” says Shrishrimal, who took the entrepreneurial plunge after barely a year out of college at IIT-Kanpur. “The platform worked in tier-II cities Vishakhapatnam, Patna and Jaipur, where these servicemen do not make a lot of money. I think, this common mission brought us together on the next gig as well.”

Gandhi and Bindra are much older. Gandhi, who is from IIT Bombay, has previously worked in consulting, while Bindra has worked at MagicBricks and other companies, and has expertise in NLP and search.

“Sorted AI is born out of a personal incident,” says Gandhi who serves as CEO of the company. “Some years ago, I was in Indonesia and we had a health emergency in my family in India. My wife didn’t have a handle on the insurance papers, and it became a mini crisis.” 

During the research for the product, Gandhi says, it emerged that often one member of a household keeps track of all such papers, though he may also be sluggish in keeping them in order. The result: you can’t find the right document when you need it; or worse, you may have missed paying the premium. 

The team found out that there was a clear need for something like this, and rolled out Sorted AI in September 2019. Early this year, the start-up thought why not also have an in-house scanning tool as well to supplement the platform. It worked on the problem and launched ‘Kaagaz Scanner’ on June 15. Few days later, Indian government banned CamScanner, the most-popular app in the category, and Kazaar Scanners made a windfall.

Gandhi says the company is at an inflection point, as people are now using local utility tools—a market which was, until recently, flooded by Chinese apps. “In India, crores of people have come online only recently, thanks to Jio, and, as is with any market, the digital journey first starts with entertainment services like games and video. Utility tools come in later,” says Gandhi. Case in point, he says, is the proliferation of digital book-keeping apps like Khatabook and OkCredit, and many WhatsApp based application, like Meesho.

“Over the coming years, lot of innovations will happen with WhatsApp as the base,” says Gandhi.