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Indian FMCG brands and retailers are at a precipice of yet another retail technology revolution. Image Recognition & Artificial Intelligence is becoming a key pillar in digital transformation strategy for the global FMCG ecosystem.
BW Businessworld team recently got in touch with Anand Prabhu Subramanian, who is the Co-founder and CEO at Infilect Inc. Having worked for over a decade in the US and India, Anand is a domain expert in Image Recognition and AI systems and has had immense experience in building enterprise solutions for multinational FMCG industries worldwide.Anand sheds light on challenges that exist in the Indian FMCG ecosystem, its impact on business, and how Image Recognition and AI technology is transforming the state of store sales.
What are the newest trends you are observing in the Indian FMCG Sector?
I see three major trends that will impact the Indian FMCG ecosystem in the next decade. The Indian semi-urban and rural segment is the new playground for leading FMCG brands. The focus is now on ensuring appropriate distribution and high product availability with the right stocking in rural locations.
Secondly, even with the surge in e-commerce channels such as Amazon Fresh, Flipkart, Bigbasket, and more, physical retail still accounts for 90% of the sales and is only increasing post the pandemic. This points to the fact that consumers are stepping out and coming back to the stores.
Thirdly, addressing the current market dynamics, the existing technology stack is proving to be counter-productive. The FMCG sector is opening up to adopting next-generation technology solutions to solve key challenges in boosting store sales.
What are the perennial challenges or what are major challenges faced by large FMCG companies in India?
The focus is back on optimal pricing, cutting costs, and effective use of ground field force to address the current inflation. Also, removing supply chain roadblocks and constraints due to geopolitical and macroeconomic factors will need to be addressed more effectively by FMCG brands.
But winning the war on retail shelves is another ball-game. Brands are facing cut-throat competition on retail shelves. With profit margins shrinking, the need of the hour demands gaining complete visibility of how products, promotions, and pricing are displayed to in-store consumers. FMCG brands are now challenged to make effective retail decisions and build winning strategies in a short window of time.
What advancements in Technology are helping FMCG brands worldwide to overcome the challenges?
I like to split the last two decades of technology advancements into 3 distinct stages; Digitalization where digital, mobile, and mobility platforms transformed businesses. The second stage being ‘the era of Big Data’ and the third being the inception of AI which was not scalable due to limited computing capabilities.
But today, the infrastructure has evolved and AI systems are supporting scale and expansion effectively. AI-powered technologies such as Computer Vision, Text & Speech Processing are bringing forth innovative solutions to address and automate several retail operations and retail execution processes. We now live in an exciting era where systemic and traditional problems are being resolved by new and innovative AI technologies.
Tell us about Infilect and your vision/thoughts on the future of retail technology.
Infilect offers the FMCG world the power of retail visual intelligence to address traditional retail execution challenges using Image Recognition and AI. Simply put, Infilect gives a real-time and front-row seat to witness what happens to the merchandise when they reach the retail shelves across thousands of stores. This level of visibility enables brands to identify retail execution errors and take corrective actions instantly to improve on-shelf performance, promotional ROI, and adherence to planogram & pricing compliance by retailers. The impact of this is a lift in per-store sales.
What are the key challenges faced by FMCG brands to improve in-store visibility?
Retail execution implementation still remains a black box amongst FMCG brands today. Lack of real-time visibility and granular data at a per-store level makes it difficult to keep track of On-shelf SKU availability, mitigate out-of-stock situations and rectify poorly implemented promotional displays. This severely hinders the ability to make decisions with confidence. This problem increases ten-fold in the Indian rural market with an already burgeoning challenge of establishing proper distribution networks.
What kind of impact brands have experienced with the use of Image Recognition and AI?
In just a few years, Infilect has scaled to 16+ countries, and 400K stores worldwide. After processing 25M in-store images per month, global FMCG brands have seen a significant lift in per-store sales with improvement in On-Shelf Availability, Share of Shelf, marketing ROI, and saved millions of dollars in trade promotions. With digitized store audits using handheld AI tools, brands now can reduce audit time, cover more stores and empower the field force to be an extended arm of retail operations.
What are the future plans of Infilect?
Infilect has proved itself to be an easy to use enterprise solution that can be swiftly set up within 2 weeks. Apart from accurately measuring on-shelf and execution metrics at scale, we also deliver AI-powered sales intelligence that eases retail decision-making. More specific recommendations are underway. For example, this could be recommendations on targeted pricing, promotional offers, assortment planning, and more. Infilect is also making significant investments in AI R&D to make use of facial recognition technology to establish next level field force productivity and efficiency. The possibilities are endless when a tool has to meet business fundamentals of the FMCG sector.
About Infilect:
Infilect Inc. builds Image Recognition and Artificial Intelligence solutions for worldwide FMCG manufacturers and Retailers. Purpose-built for FMCG, the platform empowers sales and marketing leaders with real-time and accurate on-shelf metrics and in-store retail execution insights to simplify retail decision-making, improve in-store brand visibility and boost per-store sales, at scale. Infilect’s solutions are fast to set up, priced affordably, built to delight, yet powerful enough to deliver critical business outcomes. With global offices in Bangalore – India and Delaware – the US, Infilect’s solutions are deployed in 16+ countries across 400K stores while processing 25 Million in-store images per month. For more information visit www.infilect.com
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