Anand Chandrasekaran is the founder and CTO of Mad Street Den, an Artificial Intelligence company, powering the Retail Industry with its Image Recognition platform, Vue.ai.

Anand comes from a long history in academia, with a PhD in Neuroscience, a Post Doctoral Fellowship in Neuromorphic Engineering at Stanford. As a Neuroscientist turned entrepreneur, he develops a platform for intelligent agents Mad Street Den.

The company is headquartered in the Bay Area, California with offices in Seattle and Chennai (India). Vue.ai, the company's first vertical, works with marquee retailers, brands, and marketplaces across the globe, transforming the fashion industry's operations through intelligent automation.

Prior to Vue.ai, Anand worked as a Research Scientist and Consultant developing machine learning solutions for companies including IBM and DARPA. He has also used his scientific background to develop the most advanced retail AI + computer vision solution for brands around the world.

We discuss how the company's 'neural network' of products alleviates time-intensive tasks such as manual data entry, inventory management, and catalog tagging. I learn how it enables up to 30hrs in time saved per person per week so they can focus instead on creating amazing customer experiences.

Anand shares their journey as a company and how they've scaled the platform since launch in 2016, to power commerce in over 180 countries for brands like ThredUp, Levi's, Macy's, and more. He also reveals what's next for Vue's platform and how they've successfully built a global company of 175+ employees, with 50% women, many at the executive level.