German company acquires EPFL spin-off Sight.IO

Sight.IO is a spin-off from the Image and Visual Representation Group (IVRG) at EPFL, and was founded to continue research work that has been done in the lab. Sight.IO’s photo ranking engine automatically sorts photographs on the basis of their aesthetic beauty and composition. The start-up planned to develop a mobile app and a programming interface.

Sight.IO was founded by Appu Shaji in 2012. On the website of the start-up Shaji has announced the acquisition by EyeEM: “Founding and building sight.io has been a fantastic journey and that journey will continue—in a big way. We are pleased to share that we’ve been acquired by EyeEm, a Berlin-based company that has built an amazing photography and community-centric platform on iOS, Android and the web. While we can’t share exactly what we’ll be working on, it’s safe to say that a lot of the core principles and technology built over the past few years at sight.io will make an appearance on EyeEm.”

In a blog post EyeEm comments: “We are super excited to welcome Appu on board! Originally from Thiruvananthapuram in the Indian state of Kerala, Appu has been living in Europe for over 5 years and recently joined the EyeEm Team in Berlin. With a strong background in computer vision and programming, Appu is now our Head, Research & Development, at EyeEm.”

EyeEm, based in Berlin, is a community and marketplace for a new generation of photographers. Over 10 million people are using EyeEm to capture, enhance, share and discover images, to meet people and improve their skills. Soon, photographers will also be able to sell their images and clients can purchase real, authentic imagery at the EyeEm market.