Velebit AI

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CTO of Quable B.V.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Development and maintenance of KupujemProdajem.com, the biggest classifieds portal in Serbia.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Velebit AI to accomplish?

• Classifying marketplaces listings based on listing title
• Identify the best language encoder model for Serbian language
• Train a classification model using the selected encoder
• Compile code and documentation for training and fine-tuning the model

SOLUTION

How did you find Velebit AI?

Referral

Why did you select Velebit AI over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from Velebit AI were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We needed an AI language model trained to classify ad titles. A training dataset was prepared, consisting of ad titles paired with their corresponding category IDs.

For the AI classification model, several pretrained models were evaluated as starting points. These included BERT-based models that were further fine-tuned to support the Serbian language.

We received detailed explanations at each step of the process. The final deliverables included the Python source code for model training and API implementation.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We had weekly meetings to exchange information about progress and future steps. Progress was mainly demonstrated through the performance achieved in AI training experiments conducted during the previous week.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Their project management was reliable and well-organized. We consistently received timely updates and clear communication and detailed explanations about the development. They delivered the project on time and within the planned budget.

What was your primary form of communication with Velebit AI?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their deep expertise in AI stood out the most. At every stage of the collaboration, it was evident that we were working with seasoned professionals who had extensive and relevant experience aligned with our project requirements.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Velebit AI could have done differently?

At this point, I have no suggestions for improvement — everything met our expectations.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Njuškalo, one of the top Croatian classified ad sites. Our site has different categories, such as automobile, real estate, miscellaneous goods, tourism, and more. Our company has around 90 employees, and we also have a sister technology company with around 50 employees.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Velebit AI?

We needed an experienced AI partner who was able to develop and keep accountability for large-scale and high-availability AI systems. We only had a small internal data science team, and they were focused on our current AI models and on developing new ones.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Velebit AI has developed our whole data engineering infrastructure and deployed the AI models needed on a large scale for our classified ads business. For this project, they’ve been providing on-site and off-site services. Now, they’re in charge of maintaining the three AI services they’ve developed for us.

The three services that Velebit AI has deployed for us are our Recommender Classified Ads system, our Automatic Ads Categorization system, which is an AI system based on images and texts, and a real-time camera-based object detection system. They’ve also developed the entire engineering infrastructure behind those models to deploy them on a large scale. In addition to AI development services, Velebit AI has provided us with consulting services, supporting our internal team in developing new AI models.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent roughly €100,000 (approximately $10,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in May 2021, and our engagement is ongoing. They will keep working with us this year (2022) and next year (2023).

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The systems that Velebit AI provides us with are used daily by millions of users through our app and website, so our entire platform is heavily loaded constantly. For example, we have about 4–5 million users every day across Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria, which is an outstanding number.

How did Velebit AI perform from a project management standpoint?

I’m satisfied with how well Velebit AI performs from budget and deadline management perspectives. They’re always on time, and whenever we’ve had delays, those are usually related to our internal support team. Overall, I’m really satisfied with how well they’ve delivered their work.

We have several communication channels. For regular communication, we use email and Slack. Additionally, we have biweekly meetings to go over project statuses and next-week plans, which are very important to me.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Velebit AI’s accuracy is impressive; they deliver what they promise. Additionally, they’re very collaborative, and they understand our needs very well. They’re open to our ideas and also offer their own ideas on how to offer a better service and have a smoother collaboration. Velebit AI’s team also has vast AI knowledge, and they’ve managed to present it to us in a very simple form. They’re always thinking ahead and proposing the best solutions to our challenges.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not really. It would be great if their service were less expensive, but we’re paying for the quality of their work, and we’re getting a good value out of it.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear with what you want to achieve and let them propose the best solution for that. Additionally, allow them to step into your shoes and give them enough information about your company so that they can build specific use cases for your customers.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work at the Department of Informatics and Digital Technologies at the University of Rijeka. My roles are full-time professor and leader of the Laboratory for Semantic Technologies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Velebit AI?

We hired Velebit AI to implement language and classification models within one of our projects, which involved a multi-layer framework for the information spreading characterization on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our project was funded by the National Science Foundation, which provided money for outsourcing tasks like implementing models. Since this was during the COVID-19 pandemic, we were focusing on analyzing texts posted in the language of online media.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Velebit AI provided NLP model implementation for us. First, my team collected and analyzed the data. Then, we involved Velebit AI in a few activities within the project. We had some models that had previously been trained for Croatian and other languages, and the team performed additional training and fine-tuning. 

In total, they trained two language models. For the first, they fine-tuned it and trained it on a large amount of data on COVID-19. The other model was already screened for languages like Greek, Bosnian, and Serbian. Velebit AI also fine-tuned this model for the COVID-19 text-domain.

For the second part of their involvement, they helped us with model classifiers. They implemented sentiment classifiers to help us analyze tweets in the Croatian language. The Velebit AI team also implemented models for retweet predictions, which would predict how many times a post would be retweeted.

What is the team composition?

We worked with two people from Velebit AI, including their main data scientist and another employee. Additionally, we were in contact with Davor (CEO)

How did you come to work with Velebit AI?

A scientist gave a presentation at the university, and he was great. I asked him if he could get involved in our project, but he was already very busy. However, he suggested we try Velebit AI, so we found them through a recommendation.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent just over €10,000 (approximately $10,000 USD). 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July 2020, and they were involved during two different periods. They finished the first part in July 2021 and the second part in December 2021.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Velebit AI was great. Our goal was to analyze some data and see if the models worked. According to our metrics, which involve results, published papers, and presentations, they were very successful and did their job as we planned. We were able to use the models in our scientific research to analyze texts in Croatian. We analyzed tweet sentiments and topics in more than 200,000 tweets. 

So far, we’ve published two scientific papers with our results and are preparing a third. The models are also available for further use, as the funding from the Croatian Science Foundation indicated. We also presented our findings to the Croatian Ministry of Interior Defence. 

How did Velebit AI perform from a project management standpoint?

They delivered on time. We communicated online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, using Google Meet and email. We also used phone calls, and it was easy to communicate with them. Since they were very responsive via email, we didn’t need to use any special project management tools. During our meetings, I would explain what we wanted, and they provided suggestions to improve the work.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was impressed by how enthusiastic Velebit AI was about data science. They read scientific papers because they were so eager to learn. The team proposed some scientific approaches to us. Overall, we had a great collaboration. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have any suggestions for improvement. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d recommend them for any advanced task related to NLP, deep learning, and similar data science models and AI in general. For a successful engagement, I advise having great communication with them. In our partnership, I explained their tasks and what I needed from them. They were enthusiastic about this research and appreciated the problem because it was something special related to science.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Founder and CEO of a small startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Velebit AI?

I hired Valebit AI to help me evaluate the feasibility of computer vision applied to various problems relevant to my startup. The project involvement was extensive from design, implementation and extensive optimization. I primarily worked with Mladen F., who is an exceptional engineer and scientist.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

After interviewing a variety of vendors, I was confident with Velebit AI as the best option. From professionalism, technical expertise and ultimate delivery, Valebit gave me confidence in moving forward.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Specific project details are omitted for confidentiality purposes, however the project required extensive knowledge of machine learning, computer vision, and the management of data.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Primarily one resource, Mladen F.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

I was very happy with the accomplishments during the engagement. The code quality, application performance and documentation were all excellent. I was also very impressed with the responsiveness and communication from the company.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow between our team and Velebit AI was seamless. We used slack as a primary communication channel and this worked very well.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I was most impressed with the company's technical skills and depth of knowledge. There are many options on the market, but Velebit AI truly has immense experience and expertise in machine learning and AI.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I can't think of anything specific improvements, given the overall success of the interaction.