Depending on how old you are, there must be atleast one advertisement with high recall for you, for reasons you cannot always explain. For me, one of the most heart warming ads was the Cadbury's Dairy Milk ad where a girl goes running out to the cricket pitch dancing happily, celebrating her boyfriend's boundary shot. That ad was released in 1994 and it still warms the cockles of my heart. Another brilliant ad that comes to mind is the Happydent palace ad made in 2006. It went on to win several awards and was ranked among the top 20 ads of this century. On the contrary, there are some ads that simply annoy you and you remember that brand for the very irritation you felt upon seeing that ad! (this list is honestly way longer) 

Each time I consume or utilise the products advertised in these ads, they bring back emotions associated with these ads - ranging from happiness, annoyance to curiosity. The keyword here is emotion - it is impossible to gauge what emotion can be aroused in a person upon watching a certain kind of advertisement. The best creative directors in the ad industry just know that they have to evoke the right emotions in consumers that favour brands and consequently, boost sales and build an unforgettable perception of that brand. However, not every ad you see out there is an award-winner. Let alone awards, most don't even strike the right chord with audiences. 55% of product launches fail, ad conversions are at 3% and store efficacy is reducing. Innumerable choices, multiple brands fighting for consumer attention and lack of scientific methods to assess consumer expectations continue to hamper expensive marketing and advertising efforts for years. 

But with the advent of technologies, it is now possible to understand human emotions towards brands, recommend prescriptive and probably predictive steps to enhance the retail and digital brand experience for consumers. And this is what Bangalore-based emotion AI startup Entropik Tech is doing. 

After multiple stints at startups at OyeParty, Redcastle and Citrus Pay, cofounder Ranjan Kumar decided that whenever he started his own venture, the differentiator would be very distinct and impactful. "Understanding exactly what the consumer needs is an age-old problem but methods to address this haven't evolved as much. We wanted to bring about a distinct qualitative and quantitative change in the way brands were being perceived and understood by consumers, and relay this feedback to brands so they can develop more effective campaigns for their target audience." Entropik Tech's B2B SaaS dashboard is called Affectlab.io that is driven by facial coding, eye tracking and brainwave mapping, and helps analyse emotional responses of consumers and target groups. Nearly 95% of customers are driven by emotions, yet 82% of brands rely on consumer insights that are based on stated responses. More often than not, these responses are nowhere close to accurate in depicting what a consumer truly feels about the brand. Entropik Tech is building the efficacy of neuro-research that can be detected through facial expressions and eye movements. 

While facial coding and eye tracking leverage cameras in mobile phones and laptops, brainwave mapping is done with the help of a headset. The team has filed 17 patents, with six specifically focused on improving the accuracy of brainwave mapping driven by facial coding. One of the biggest challenges facial recognition experts worldover face is that they have to utilise static image datasets, upon which they run deep learning models. This can affect accuracy especially while dealing with people of different races and ethnic identities. This led to the Entropik Tech team to cross train facial coding with brainwave datasets, which helped improve the machine's accuracy in correlating facial expressions with emotions. The team has filed a patent on facial coding micro-expression that picks up even a minor twitch on the face or in the eyes, and accurately correlates this to an emotion that the person feels when experiencing a stimulus. 

So far, Affectlab.io has gathered over 50 million respondents across different parameters on its platform. A brand can choose the most appropriate set of respondents as its focus group and test its product. Summary insights and consumer reports qualifying collective target group behaviour and A/B comparison are shared with the brand for further analysis, within 48 hours. While Affectlab.io's Affect Insights platform gathers target groups and assesses responses, Affectlab.io has two more offerings - Affect UX for UX managers to develop appropriate digital retail experiences and Affect API that offer emotion APIs and SDKs for custom requests. 

Entropik Tech's clientele include P&G, Unilever, ITC, Accenture Ventures, SAP, Voot, Flipkart and Vodafone among many more, including Fortune 500 companies. The startup was also listed as a Gartner Cool AI Vendor and Best Media AI company by Amazon. 

With a repository of 35 million consumer emotion data patterns and 6 million being added each month, Kumar is planning on leveraging AI to make future summary insights and reports more predictive and analytical. By understanding exactly what consumers want based on data-driven insights, Entropik Tech can aid brands develop more impactful campaigns and drive revenue margins.