2023-10-01 00:00:40
As in other sectors, Artificial Intelligence opens a world of possibilities in retail distribution. From opening an establishment without employees to having carts that add up the amount of our purchase and that, above all, allow the business to identify the user and offer them advertising tailored to their consumer profile through the cart itself. “Retail is very pressured by margins, so it is always looking for innovative solutions that increase sales through a better customer experience or cost reduction thanks to operational efficiency,” explains Alberto Gómez, founding partner of Grabit, a Bilbao startup that develops some of the technological solutions that we can already see in supermarkets.
Thus, for example, it already collaborates with Dibal, the leading firm in the Spanish market in the development of weighing and labeling solutions for the commerce and industry sectors. We may never have noticed, but theirs are many of the scales with which we ourselves weigh the fruit in the supermarket. We place the apples in the weighing area, mark the assigned code on the screen and, automatically, we obtain a sticker that informs us and the cashier staff of the cost of that purchase. A minimal effort that can now be even reduced. Grabit’s artificial vision allows Derio’s company to offer scales in which the customer no longer has to do even that.
Distinguish types of apples
«The way in which the sticker is weighed and generated is the same, that of Dibal technology. Our business model is to license artificial vision software to manufacturers and technology integrators for the distribution sector. In this case, what we provide is a tool that, based on the images taken by a camera placed on the top of the scale, identifies exactly what type of apple we are weighing, so the client no longer has to give any indication to the scale. weighing machine. In Bilbao there is already one installed in the Sarriko BM and the user opinions are very favorable,” explains Gómez. The firm is already working on adapting the technology so that it can also be incorporated by supermarkets in which the weighing is carried out by the establishment’s staff at the checkout counter.
Collaboration with Dibal
It has incorporated this technology into scales that identify which products are weighed on them.
On the other hand, Grabit is also preparing the incorporation of artificial vision to self-service terminals “which we will increasingly see in more supermarkets.” «Today they raise two big problems. One is the space they occupy because most of them have to incorporate a scale and the other is that there are people who are rogue and where they set up robberies increase,” he points out, recalling the case of a young Frenchman arrested after stealing a PlayStation in one of the bags from the fruit shop and weigh it applying the price established for oranges. In this way, the self-payment machine that read the barcode attached to the bag interpreted that the kid had to pay only nine euros instead of the almost 350 euros that the electronic device cost. The boy had made the same play the day before without any problem.
Avoid theft
“In such a case, artificial vision can verify whether there is indeed a correspondence between the barcode and the product being checked out, in addition to checking, for example, that we did not leave any product in the cart,” explains the co-founder of Grabit. In its case, to develop this type of self-service checkouts it has had the collaboration of the American multinational Nvidia in the development of a ‘software’ that it is already testing in real scenarios with the participation of a manufacturer of self-service checkouts and a company of ‘retail’.
Hurried
The firm, which had a turnover of 80,000 euros in 2022, is now seeking financing of 500,000 euros to scale and become a benchmark in this market niche “so specific that there are only three other companies in the world that do the same.” To achieve them, he will present his proposal on the 17th and 18th at the celebration of B-Venture, the startup forum organized by EL CORREO. The event, which this year reaches its eighth edition, is sponsored by the Department of Economic Development, Sustainability and Environment of the Basque Government, the development agency SPRI, the Provincial Council of Bizkaia and the Bilbao City Council, as well as the collaboration of BStartup of Banco Sabadell, BBVA Spark, BBK, Laboral Kutxa, CaixaBank and the University of Deusto.
Smart refrigerators
When Grabit was born at the end of 2019, Artificial Intelligence had not yet experienced the ‘boom’ that came later, but its potential was already evident thanks to technologies such as computer vision, on which the startup wanted to focus. The first application they thought about was incorporating this technology into refrigerators that would complete the service of classic vending machines.
The user could open them by scanning a QR code visible on the door on their mobile phone, take what they wanted from inside and pay via phone once the door is closed again. The entire process would be followed by cameras that would send the images to the analysis ‘software’ in charge of identifying what we have taken out and counting without error even if we had hesitated and touched several containers before deciding. In fact, one of its advantages is that it would allow you to analyze the products before buying them.
“It improves the user experience because it is an easy technology that also allows the company to expand the range of foods it offers and obtain data to better understand user behavior,” says its co-founder, Alberto Gómez. The development of this first application was somewhat put on hold due to the outbreak of the pandemic – “with confinement and teleworking it was not the best time for the vending sector” – but it now constitutes the firm’s third line of work.