Aptech targets INR 500 crore revenue from Creval by 2030

Vocational education specialist Aptech Ltd has launched Creval, an AI-powered visual art evaluation tool. Using Amazon Bedrock for generative AI capabilities (which currently constitutes Claude Sonnet 3.5 AI), the company claimed that this tool provides real-time feedback, grades, and specific recommendations for improvement on the artwork submitted for evaluation.

Creval assesses the artwork on a range of parameters including profanity check, plagiarism, and aesthetics, and offers a composite score to users along with benchmarking guidance. Since it is AI-powered, the tool's regular users can also get personalised guidance on the specific areas that they need to improve upon.

Sandip Weling, chief business officer, global retail business, Aptech Limited, said, “Creval provides the student community with a standardised and interactive feedback mechanism. In addition to artwork evaluation, it can provide personalised mentorship assistance to aspiring artists and creative professionals.”

Amazon Bedrock is a managed service that offers security and private data processing capabilities in addition to foundational models—large-scale machine learning models trained on vast datasets and designed to perform a wide range of generative AI tasks—on top of AWS cloud infrastructure platform. Kanishka Agiwal, head for service lines, public sector, AWS India, said, “Amazon Bedrock offers a choice of foundation models and built-in features for responsible AI. Aptech’s Creval is an exciting example of how generative AI can augment human skills and potential.”

The new evaluation tool, according to Aptech, will be useful to individuals who want their artworks to be examined as well as to educationists who have to evaluate artwork submissions of hundreds or thousands of students accurately, objectively, and in a short time span. Currently limited to image format only, the technical team at Aptech will soon incorporate other forms of artwork including video for evaluation by Creval, inform Aptech officials.

As an introductory offer, Creval will be available for free for a one-time use. However, it will soon cost INR 170 per artwork evaluation (for one image). As the tool’s adoption levels increase, the pricing may change, informed Weling of Aptech. The tool is available for download and use at the ProAlley website, Aptech’s edtech brand. The tool is also integrated with its learning app for everyone to use.

The application is expected to be of use to professionals from industries including animation, 3D, gaming and interaction design, VFX and motion design, graphics and multimedia, virtual production, photography, and pre-production. Clubbed under a vertical named AVGC-XR (animation, visual effects, gaming, comics, and extended reality), these industries have collectively been growing at 17% to 18% annually. Creval will be of immediate use for students, as well as professionals from the AVGC-XR vertical, Aptech officials mention.

The National Education Policy for 2025, according to Aptech officials, also highlights the importance of inclusion of vocational courses from AVGC-XR fields in the school and college curricula in India. As more and more educational institutes incorporate vocational education as part of their student’s syllabi, the demand potential for Creval will grow, the Aptech officials opine.

Aptech provides vocational courses that aim to make students employable in various sectors. Within its institutes, it expects to have a total addressable market opportunity of more than 50,000 existing students in media and entertainment industry and in other domains.

The company plans to provide a marketing push to the product through various on-ground activities. For starters, leveraging its network of 350 branches, it will reach out to four to five lakh students from hundreds of colleges in India to create awareness about Creval among students as well the college faculty members.

The students who opt for vocational education are typically those who do not pursue higher education in medicine, engineering, or IITs or IIMs. Instead, they focus on acquiring specialised skillsets to build their careers. Aptech will approach all such colleges where it will find more students who value vocational education.

The company will organise seminars to communicate the importance of Creval in their vocational education. After one phase of these extensive student outreach activities in the country is completed, Aptech will undertake a lead nurturing exercise in collaboration with a few call centres and invite the interested students to attend workshops at various locations in the country for familiarisation with and hands-on training on the tool.

Aptech spends about 10% of its revenues on marketing every year. The marketing spends on Creval are expected to be about 20% of that overall budget. For the nine months ending December 31, 2024, Aptech’s revenue stood at INR 341.41 crores (approximately). Estimating that Aptech will close the year with more than INR 450 crores in revenues, the marketing spends on Creval may work out to be about INR 9 crores in the first year.

Given the tool’s applicability and usefulness to a vast number of students, teachers, and professionals across the AVGC-XR vertical, Aptech is targeting INR 500 crores in sales revenues from Creval business alone in the next four to five years, according to Weling.