10 promising retail technology ventures

AI, machine learning, blockchain, cashless payments, interactive video and social platforms. Retail Technology Innovation Hub brings you all this and more as it showcases 10 cool startups to watch in 2018

HubBox

Click & Collect venture, HubBox, was recently named as Retail Week’s 2018 Launchpad@Live winner. It beat machine learning outfit, Increasingly, and video content specialist, Smartzer, to pick up the prize. Check back next week for Retail Technology Innovation Hub’s indepth profile of this fast moving startup.

Nuggets

Nuggets is a blockchain e-commerce payments and ID platform. Alastair Johnson, CEO and Founder, recently told RTIH about the origins of the company, and his quest to banish passwords and change the way we shop.

Thyngs

Earlier this year, Founder of Tossed, Vincent McKevitt, along with the company’s Financial Director Neil Sebba, injected an undisclosed amount of cash into PayTech venture, Thyngs, as part of a £300,000 crowdfunding round.

Check out our Q&A with Dr. Neil Garner, Founder of Thyngs, here.

Wisher

Based in London and Los Angeles and founded in 2015, Wisher is a social platform, with its Wish Factory pitched as a one of a kind pop-up experience where customers can try out products and add them to mobile wish lists. Brands in turn can track data and convert sales. “I’m a bit of a hippy at heart,” Maz Cohen, Founder and CEO, told RTIH in a recent interview.

GreenJinn

GreenJinn has come up with a cashback app that’s using artificial intelligence to create the next generation of mobile couponing.

“We’ve noticed that many existing systems for saving money are inefficient and time consuming for the users. Offers are often irrelevant to them and are usually on obscure products. We plan to change the face of couponing to become simple, fast and useful using our AI powered technology,” says CEO and Co-founder, Giuseppe Licari.

AiFi

US startup, AiFi, recently emerged from stealth with a scalable checkout-free solution. Using its AI technology, sensor and camera networks and seamless system integration, AiFi says that it is already working with one of the world’s largest retailers to create its offering on “a massive scale”.

“Consumers and businesses alike want to be efficient and with a checkout-free store, consumers have an incredible shopping experience. Because our technology is massively scalable, tens of thousands of stores worldwide can become a ‘grab and go’ type of retailer,” says Steve Gu, CEO, AiFi.

“The shopping experience now demonstrated and widely promoted by Amazon is just the tiniest taste of what the AiFi technology will do for retailers, with shops that range from tiny to huge. Our pilot will roll-out in one very large store, orders of magnitude bigger than the Amazon Go store, at the end of this year, with many more large stores to follow so thousands of consumers will experience the delight of no longer standing in long and tedious checkout lines.”

EyeFitU

EyeFitU provides personal sizing recommendations to users, across the likes of Net-a-Porter, Asos and River Island. The aim of the platform is to remove the stress of shopping (brought about by global inconsistencies in sizing), reduce returns rates and, ultimately, bring fun back into the shopping experience. 

Check out our interview with Founder and CEO, Isabelle Ohnemus, here. 

Increasingly

Increasingly taps machine learning to predict, personalise and target customers with automated product bundles in stores.

Highlights include being shortlisted with Travis Perkins for Best Use of AI at the 2018 Performance Marketing Awards, set to take place next month. The venture also recently made it to the final of Retail Week’s 2018 Launchpad@Live competition.

Smartzer

Increasingly was joined in the final of Retail Week’s 2018 Launchpad@Live competition by Smartzer, which builds interactive videos to enhance e-commerce experiences and provides clients with detailed data and analytics. The company’s clients include Kohl's, Marks and Spencer, Puma and Barbour. 

Watch out for our interview with Karoline Gross, Founder of Smartzer, coming soon.

Poq

Poq has created an app development platform, which is sold to its customers on a SaaS basis.

In The Style recently worked with the company on the launch of a iOS shopping app. Other clients include House of Fraser and MADE.com.

If you think we’ve missed any promising startups, let us know: scott.thompson@retailtechinnovationhub.com