All over the world, retail brands today lack the necessary visibility to keep track of the presence, positioning, and performance of retail products across a large number of retail stores. This is largely due to the fact that the retail shelves remain un-digitized. This results in out-of-stocks and overstocking, causing trillions of dollars in expenses worldwide. Bangalore-based Infilect may have the solution to this problem.“InfiViz, our flagship product, leverages IR & AI to process pictures of retail shelves from thousands of retail stores in Modern Trade and General Trade markets. InfiViz instantly generates revenue optimizing action plans, reduces stock-outs, and consequently, improves same-store sales by 2% to 5%,” says Anand Prabhu Subramanian, CEO and co-founder of Infilect.

Infilect was established in 2015 by Anand Prabhu Subramanian (former Bell Labs and IBM Research) and Vijay Gabale (former IBM Research, PHD IIT Bombay) to transform worldwide retail through the usage of Image Recognition (IR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The company has been pioneering visual intelligence and innovation to build intelligent AI systems to empower retail decision-makers to help them do more with their time and capital.

Its intelligent AI systems continuously enhance each and every decision that is important in manufacturing, distributing, executing and selling retail products present at any retail store anywhere on the planet. The company has been supercharging decision making in some of the world’s biggest retail brands in FMCG, Consumer Electronics, Food & Beverages, Home Improvement sectors across geographies. Infilect’s mission is to digitally empower worldwide retail through intelligent, accelerated, and sustainable decision making.

Retail Visual Intelligence

There are innovations happening all over the world in Image Recognition and AI, and yet none of these are being applied to retail to solve the huge problem of inventory tracking to prevent overstocking and under-stocking. Infilect’s products empower the retail industry with unprecedented visibility into omnichannel sales, in-store merchandising, and store operations.

Consumers interact with retail brands every day in several retail outlets. These interactions at the retail outlets can reveal a lot, and understanding them to the finest level can provide retailers and brands the information that can be used to improve their product offerings, operations and customer experiences. Nielsen study points that over 70% of decision making happens at the shelf, and it is absolutely critical for brands to own this decision making moments with a strong retail strategy. Although these interactions are captured daily through the in-store video cameras, they are not utilized in the best way possible. Hence, this becomes “dark data” that has potential. Infilect is tapping into this to help retailers and brands across the globe.

The company’s products are trusted by global customers and partners. Infilect is part of Nasscom Deep Tech Club, Intel India’s Maker Lab Program, IITB-SINE’s Plugin Accelerator, and NVIDIA’s Inception program. The products have been nothing short of revolutionary and recently helped Infilect attract Pre-Series A funding of $1.5 million. The Pre-Series A funding was led by Mela ventures and 1Crowd, with participation from The Chennai Angels (TCA).

“Infilect’s products automate traditional retail processes with speed, accuracy, and on a large scale. Thereby, Infilect empowers decision makers in the entire organization, from associates to category owners to sales leaders, with unprecedented insights and actions. We see a great potential in ‘team Infilect’ to build a world-class Enterprise SaaS company out of India, and we are thrilled to be partnering with Anand and Vijay through our maiden investment,” said Parthasarathy N.S, Managing Partner, Mela Ventures. Infilect is now looking to expand its go-to-market programs with the investment and will continue to research in the areas of Image Recognition (IR) for retail execution, supply-chain optimization, store personalization and category planning.

The Leader

Anand Prabhu Subramanian, Co-Founder and CEO

He has a strong research and product building experience. He has spent over 15 years in this space. He has led large scale analytics products at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, USA (2009-2013) and at IBM Research, India (2013-2015). He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Stony Brook University, NY, USA and a B.E degree from College of Engineering Guindy, Anna University, India.

“Infilect exists and innovates to build digital technologies that empower retail decision makers and optimise their time and capital.”

“Infilect’s SaaS products and Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision based technologies continuously optimise retail supply-chain, from manufacturing to distribution to execution across millions of retail stores in global markets.”

“Infilect is a pioneer in visual data intelligence and innovates to build intelligent AI systems to empower retail decision makers so that they can do more with their time and capital.”

“The company has been pioneering visual intelligence and innovation to build intelligent AI systems to empower retail decision makers to help them do more with their time and capital.”