How Paralleldots Is Building AI Solutions For FMCG Companies and Retailers

Angam Parashar

Please tell us about the journey of your company. What are your USPs?

ParallelDots is building an AI platform for retail with focus on computer vision. Our product ‘ShelfWatch' helps FMCG companies and retailers measure and improve visibility and presence of their brands on retail shelves. We analyze pictures of retail shelves in real-time to extract meaningful information such as on-shelf availability of products, out-of-stock, pricing compliance, etc.

We started this company in 2017 as enterprise AI solutions firm. While working with clients in retail, we felt the need of a solution to analyze visual shelf data. So, in 2019 we started focusing exclusively on retail and FMCG industry by building solutions specific to their needs. Today ShelfWatch is deployed across 25+ countries with some of the largest FMCG companies and retailers. We have also grown our team to more than 100 people spread out across functions such as sales and marketing, customer success, data science, and product and engineering. We analyze 4M retail shelf images monthly. We have raised a total of $6M in venture capital from investors based out of US and UK.

We differentiate ourselves on our machine learning technology and customer success. Our proprietary computer vision tech has delivered state-of-the-art accuracy numbers for our clients across the globe. Having said that, we don't just stop after deploying the solution - we work closely with our customers to ensure that they get the right ROI after deploying our solution.

Throughout your journey, what was the most vital risk you took? How did you succeed?

We are a team of three founders - and none of us come from the FMCG/Retail background. This posed one of the bigger challenges for us to not only understand the industry in detail but also build trust among the industry stakeholders. Overtime we onboarded a team of industry experts from different countries to help us not just understand the global retail market but also bring in the necessary credibility.

We further learned how incredibly hard it was to sell AI-driven product to enterprises. It came with its own set of challenges including learning how to efficiently communicate with our clients. It also takes time to realize the impact of AI solutions for the enterprises it is more of a ‘crawl-walk-run' journey, rather than outright disruption from Day 1. Building case studies and efficient and consultative communication helped us get over this challenge over time.

Pandemic also taught us the importance of the focus, strict financial discipline, and agile and nimble business strategy in order to succeed during tough times.

What, as per you, are the three essential things that FMCG should be looking at today?

The last few years have been very different for FMCG companies. With the rising e-commerce during the pandemic to the slow-down in the e-commerce growth today, the market changes so frequently. FMCG companies, despite being large enterprises, need to be nimble and agile to succeed in such environment. While new-age D2C brands are trying to capture the online segment, they have also started penetrating the offline segment. Today traditional FMCG companies must be omnichannel to ward off competition successfully and be future proof.When it comes to offline segment, which still drives 90% of sales for FMCG companies, it is important to get your retail execution right. Consumers only buy what they see on the shelves. It is important for FMCG companies to win the ‘Shelf Wars' to retain their market share and growth momentum.With increased inflation amid rising labor costs, FMCG companies must prioritize digital transformation across functions to bring in much-needed operational efficiency. The solution to such problems should not be just increasing prices of their products for end-consumers. FMCG companies who will be able to control their costs and increase their sales ops through use of technology shall emerge as long-term winners.

How often do you motivate your staff to boost your company's productivity? As per current market trends, how do you ensure your customer growth and exceptional experience?

In today's remote working environment, keeping in touch with your colleagues has become even more difficult. What we have realized is that as long as our colleagues are growing professionally the motivation remains high. As a co-founder, it is our responsibility to ensure that our employees are given an opportunity to grow. To a certain extent, employee growth coincides with the growth of the company. As we have grown into a global company in the last 24 months, our employees have been exposed to some of the largest FMCG companies while deploying a complex AI technology for them at scale. Other than that, we have also seen the important of transparency between the management and employees. It goes a long way in establishing trust between all the stakeholders.

What are your future plans to expand and grow your network and take the brand to the new heights?

A. Product Roadmap.

1. Ability to train AI with less and less data. AI by nature is very data hungry. In retail world, where there are millions of unique SKUs with different packaging, it is important to have an AI engine that can digest new/unknown SKUs in a short time without compromising on accuracy. Very recently we launched our latest AI platform named ‘Data Flyweel', which essentially allows us to train our AI models in a matter of hours by leveraging terabytes of data we have built overtime. It will further continue to evolve in the coming years.

2. Video recognition of retail shelf. In some cases, it is easier to capture the shelf through a video instead of images. While processing videos is heavier in terms of compute cost, it could give operational benefit while capturing the data. We are working to bring down the cost of processing retail shelf videos significantly.

3. Development of shelf camera. For categories which are fast-moving, it also makes sense to install a shelf camera to continuously monitor the stock on shelves.

B. Expansion Plans.

1. Expanding our direct presence in markets like US and Europe in 2023

2. Going deeper in markets like India where we already have significant presence.

3. Expanding our partners, who help us sell our product, in markets where we don't have a direct presence.

Feel free to add about your partnership or any interesting insights.

I would love to talk about some of the emerging trends in the retail space globally.

1. Retail world is changing. After the insane e-commerce growth during the pandemic, the offline retail is making a comeback with e-commerce growth slowing down. Digital transformation is of highest priority for large FMCG companies and retailers for whom offline is still a disproportionately larger than online. According to a recent study, consumer goods manufacturers will spend $24B on digital transformation by 2030. A significant portion of this spend would go in adopting technologies such as AI/machine learning to drive efficiencies.

2. There is a larger push by the various ecosystem players to digitize the offline retail market. ONDC in India is one such example where government is building a platform to enable small merchants and retailer come online. This will help in further digitization of the offline world in markets dominated by traditional trade enabling even the smaller Kirana stores to sell online.

3. Consumer habits continue to evolve. Rise in the D2C brands has resulted in increased options for consumers. This has put increased pressure on larger CPG manufacturers and retailers to delight the consumers. We foresee that the market will continue to evolve and all the pillars of the ecosystem - manufacturers, distributers, retailers, and consumers - will come on one platform resulting in best experience for everybody.

4. We are also seeing some early attempts to bring offline retail experience into Metaverse. However, it is too early to comment on whether it will gain traction within consumer or not.