Amazon has become the heartbeat of business activity, and today the startup that’s building technology to help retailers keep up in the world of physical stores is announcing some funding to help expand its business. Trigo, an Israeli startup that builds technology for stores to operate cashier-free, with “check-out” experiences similar to those found in Amazon Go stores, has raised $100 million.
Trigo focuses on grocery shopping, and has a list of high-profile grocery retailers on its books, including UK-based supermarket giant Tesco. German REWE; ALDI Nord in the Netherlands; NATO in Munich; Shufersal in Israel; And in the US, Wakefer’s partnership plan is to expand the fund’s relationship with these and add more to this list, where there is strong competition in the market. Others in the same category include Standard Cognition (worth over $1 billion last year), Shopik, Keper, Zippin and Grabango to name a few.
It also doubles down on expanding the technology. Alongside its hardware and software-based standalone checkout system, Trigo also offers inventory management and will soon launch StoreOS to connect these with other tools (analytics, marketing and more) to help physical retailers connect brick-and-mortar. -Mortar stores better with their online operations and – thanks to the popularity of e-commerce – what customers are now generally expecting from any shopping experience.
Singapore’s Temasek and 83 North are co-leading this round, with new backer SAP and previous backers Hetz Ventures, Red Dot Capital Partners, Vertex Ventures, Viola and REWE also participating.
The startup isn’t disclosing a price, but according to Pitchbook, the final price was in 2020, around $208 million. This last round raised a total of nearly $300 million.
Computer vision, machine learning, and other innovations in artificial intelligence are being used in earnest in autonomous systems in a variety of industries, and supermarkets are one of the more exciting applications. In the face of the onslaught of buying groceries online and having them delivered to someone’s home, in the short term, retailers’ in-store experiences have largely remained stagnant.
In-store, however, represents a large amount of inefficient profit due to real estate and construction costs, product turnover, theft and the cost of maintaining staff to serve customers. The argument for bringing automation to the grocery store is not one of technology for technology’s sake, but that it can help reduce costs and waste in all of these areas, where customers often rush to do other things. .
Called “EasyOut,” Trigo’s self-checkout solution relies on a series of overhead cameras, shelf sensors and algorithms to create cashier-free experiences from stores’ “digital twins.”
Some believe this is an expensive approach in terms of initial installation and maintenance, arguing that other approaches, such as those based on sensors placed on shopping carts, are a better approach.
“Smart counters and smart carts have their place, but full-store frictionless checkouts can leverage AI-powered cameras and sensors — where hardware costs are ever-decreasing — in terms of the experience it offers consumers and the tools it enables retailers to leverage,” CEO and co-founder Michael Gabbay told TechCrunch. Crunch said in an email. One of the issues, he said, is that carts don’t count shoppers buying two carry-ons. “Frictionless checkout makes shopping seamless for everyone, regardless of the size of their basket or the circumstances in which they plan to shop. If you have a full shopping cart, you don’t want to wait at the cashier or scan all the items at the self-checkout, you just want to check out, regardless of the size of your store.
He also believes that the “digital twin” approach Trigo uses, which reflects the store in real-time, is more accurate and reusable beyond just check-out, such as predictive inventory management. “Smart carts and similar technologies do not allow the full digitization of the store, so they are limited solutions compared to the whole system,” he said.
Gabbay says that even in the current market environment, the biggest issue for stores and consumers is inflation and that people are concerned about the cost of goods, not the time it takes to buy them – it hasn’t really dampened their conversations with customers. “Especially at a time of high inflation, inflation and supply chain disruptions, the importance of controlling inventory and procurement is high,” he said. The company did not disclose how much it would cost to equip the average supermarket with the technology, but said it would recoup its investment in 18 months. “Technology-enabled cost savings accumulate over time and increase the profits of grocery retailers,” he said.
One argument for Trigo is that its technology can be used for all shopping, regardless of cart size, but the focus right now is large-format supermarkets, Gabay said. So far, it has opened stores between 3,000 square feet and 5,000 square feet — “on-the-go” type stores, Gabay said — but “now we’re working with larger formats, including stores over 10,000 square feet.”
As the grocery sector remains the company’s focus, its long-term plan is to expand into other retail categories, such as pharmacies and quick-service restaurants. But we see great potential in repurposing thousands of existing grocery stores around the world, Gabay said. This is accelerating as grocers connect their e-commerce stores with their physical stores.
This is where SAP comes into the picture. It is described as a strategic backer this round: it works with its own long list of retail customers and plans to help integrate Trigo into systems.
“Trigo’s advanced computer vision technology has built the infrastructure for purchasing and purchasing and laid the foundation for future incremental scenarios in the store,” said Jorn Keller, EVP and head of SAP S/4HANA, in a statement. “As a leading provider of enterprise software for the retail industry, SAP is excited to join Trigo as a strategic investor to support the development of StoreOS, an autonomous supermarket operating system. Their solutions complement SAP’s cloud solutions for retail, seamlessly integrating with SAP S/4HANA to build an intelligent store.” They pave the way.
