Technology has started playing a very significant role in the retail sector in the last decade. The emergence of the popularity of e-commerce has made it difficult for offline retailers and small mom-and-pop stores. Therefore, traditional retail stores need to keep up to date with technological advancements in the industry.
The world retailing industry is becoming increasingly competitive, making companies take any innovative approaches that can attract consumers and encourage long-term loyalty. As of December 2019, 71% of global consumers stated that they were interested in using an app to purchase products through self-checkout. At the peak of the covid-19 pandemic, online sales grew nearly 50% as consumers stayed home but continued to shop.
Here is a list of top 10 startups in the world that provides retail technology solutions:
1. Faire
Faire is a two-sided marketplace and wholesale platform for retailers to discover and buy unique wholesale merchandise for their stores while helping brands and producers reach local retailers. The company offers its clients a toolkit of simple tech, data insights, financial terms and logistics solutions to sustain the future of local retail. Faire’s payment terms and free returns take risk out of the wholesale business so that local retailers and independent brands can compete with bigger brands and e-commerce giants.
Founders: Daniele Perito, Jeffrey Kolovson, Marcelo Cortes and Max Rhodes
Founding year: 2016
Headquarters: San Francisco, United States and Ontario, Canada
Funding received in 2020: US$ 170M in Series E round
Investors: Y Combinator, Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Forerunner Ventures, Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global and D1 Capital Partners
2. Syte
It is a provider of visual AI technology that focuses on enhancing retailers’ site navigation, product discovery, and user experience by engineering solutions that engage and convert shoppers. The B2B enterprise’s solution includes camera search, augmented site search, personalization engines, and smart in-store tools, empowering shoppers to find out and purchase products quickly. Syte’s camera solution helps shoppers take pictures of the product that inspires them and search for similar products visually, within a retailer’s site itself. To date, Syte has raised US$ 71 million.
Founders: Helge Voss, Idan Pinto, Lihi Pinto Fryman and Ofer Fryman
Founding year: 2015
Headquarters: Tel Aviv, Israel
Funding received in 2020: US$ 40M in Series C and Debt Financing rounds
Investors: Viola Ventures, LG Tech Ventures, NHN Ventures, Kreos Capital, Naver Corporation, Commerce Ventures, Storm Ventures, Axess Ventures, La Maison, MizMaa Ventures, Magma, Naver Corporation, Line Corporation, Reimage Ventures, North Base Media and KDC Ventures.
3. Nuvemshop | Tiendanube
Nuvemshop delivers entrepreneurs and SMBs with the tools to set up, manage, and promote their online businesses without difficulty, from any device. Its services include tools for payments, shipping, inventory management, and marketing provided by the company. Using these tools, the owners will be able to participate in the e-commerce market, ramp up their sales, reduce costs, and can provide their end customers with a fulfilling shopping experience.
Founders: Alejandro Alfonso, Santiago Sosa, Jose Abuchaem, Martin Palombo, and Alejandro Vazquez
Founding year: 2011
Headquarters: São Paulo, Brazil
Funding received in 2020: US$ 30M in Series C round
Investors: Qualcomm Ventures, Kevin Efrusy, Kaszek Ventures, IGNIA, FJ Labs and Elevar Equity
4. AiFi
AiFi is a tech company that makes the world’s most advanced store automation systems. It combines AI, edge computing, and scalable sensor fusion technology to deliver auto-checkout operations for retailers of any size. This technology is currently used by some of the world’s largest retailers such as Albert Heijn, Carrefour, Zabka, etc.
The startup also offers a NanoStore, which is built to provide a tiny footprint, modular, plug-and-play automated store of the future that can function, unstaffed, all days of the week. These NanoStores can deliver quicker, very convenient shopping near homes, offices, schools, etc. The company has an estimated revenue range between US$ 1million and US$ 10 million.
Founders: Steve Gu and Ying Zheng
Founding year: 2016
Headquarters: Santa Clara, USA
Funding received in 2020: US$ 14.5M in Series B round
Investors: TransLink Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Plum Alley and Cervin Ventures
5. Chiper
Chiper is Latin America’s top e-commerce platform that helps corner stores in the region to develop. It has over 3,000 customers across Colombia and Mexico and has built the largest network of digitized corner stores across Latin America. The platform has a demand-driven logistics system, which can provide a great customer experience and in the end help member stores make smart decisions to optimise performance.
Founders: Carolina Garcia, Jose Jair Bonilla and Oscar Sarria Guerrero
Founding year: 2018
Headquarters: Cundinamarca, Colombia
Funding received in 2020: US$ 12M in Series A round
Investors: WIND Ventures, S7V, Monashees and Fourth Realm
6. Arzooo.com
Arzooo was founded by ex-Flipkart colleagues and IIT Kharagpur alumni and it delivers retail Tech company to enable brick & mortar retail with technology to compete online with its flagship and unique Go Store platform. The company is committed to integrating over 300,000 fragmented retail stores. Arzooo Go store is India’s fastest growing Integrated retail network with over 200 stores already under their belt.
Arzooo provides its partner stores with a technology platform that can showcase a large selection to its customers without having to invest in Inventory, create competitive price and offer highly performing payment solutions to improve sales conversion in-store. The company has an estimated revenue range between US$1million and US$ 10 million.
Founders: Khushnud Khan and Rishi Raj Rathore
Founding year: 2016
Headquarters: Bangalore, India
Funding received in 2020: US$ 7.5M in Series A round
Investors: WRVI Capital, Jabbar Internet Group and 3Lines
7. Vibenomics
Vibenomics provides businesses with Audio Experience Software (AES) to manage background music, scheduled messaging, live announcements, and out-of-home (OOH) advertising. They help businesses enhance sales and enrich the customer experience through licensed background music playlists and professional voice announcements.
Founders: Brent Oakley, Adam Ritz, and Nathan Mille
Founding year: 2016
Headquarters: Indiana, USA
Funding received in 2020: US$ 6.5M in Series A and debt financing rounds
Investors: Elevate Ventures and BIP Capital
8. Duel
Duel is a Brand Advocacy Platform that helps purpose-led brands to power organic growth and retention of customers through word-of-mouth and advocacy. The startup’s platform manages a brand’s relationship with thousands of their advocates through advocacy Programs that engage, retain and drive word-of-mouth sales, with the help of challenges, UGC, referrals, loyalty, affiliates and surveys. It deals with customer membership clubs and VIP programs with airline-style ‘status’ tiers, groups and segmentation.
The Duel team is made up of psychologists, brand experts and community builders from companies including Amazon and Lululemon and is used by brands such as Rab, Lowe Alpine, Monica Vinader, King of Shaves, Frugi, Mud Jeans, etc.
Founders: Panagiotis Tsarouchis and Paul Archer
Founding year: 2015
Headquarters: London, United Kingdom
Funding received in 2020: £1.8M in Seed round
Investors: University of Bristol Enterprise Fund, Publicis Groupe, London Co-Investment Fund and Downing Ventures
9. Tango Eye
Tango Eye is a retail video analytics SaaS product platform, which helps retailers understand the customer’s journey, improve its employee productivity and enforce safety security standards. The startup is harnessing advances in AI vision technology to digitize video data and derive actionable insights for different businesses. Tango Eye’s Secure Eye product has features that can help retailers implement social distancing and other Covid-19 compliance measures in their stores. Their Manager Eye product has features which will help managers identify KPI’s and assess its levels for increasing storefront efficiency.
Founders: Surender Gounder
Founding year: 2018
Headquarters: Chennai, India
Funding received in 2020: US$ 500K in Seed funding round
Investors: Riso Investments, Lenskart and Gaurav Gulati
10. Hazina
Hazina provides technology solutions and distribution systems for Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) brands to improve its quality of insights and engagements from their product sampling campaigns. The company matches consumers to product samples from CPGs, delivers directly to the consumers home and collates the feedback and engagements into insights, which will be delivered back to the brand.
Founders: Adeniyi Jaiyeola, Damilare Ogunleye, Michael Ukandu and Samuel Darko
Founding year: 2020
Headquarters: Lagos, Nigeria
Funding received in 2020: US$ 100K in Pre-seed round
Investors: Niche Capital and Adebowale Martins
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