It can take several years to develop new packaged foods or consumer goods. Companies must research, prototype, and test the products. People expect trends to land on shelves faster in a society that is based on social media. Ai Palette was founded in 2018 and uses machine learning to spot trends and make them available for retail, sometimes within a matter of months. Today, the startup, which has clients such as Danone, Kelloggs and Cargill, announced that it had raised a $4.4 million Series A. It was co-led today by Exfinity Venture Partners and pi Ventures. Both will be joining Ai Palettes board.
It also featured participation from Decacorn Capital and AgFunder, returning backers of the food tech venture firm Decacorn Capital, as well as Anthill Ventures, a new investor. This brings Ai Palettes' total funding to $5.5million, with a seed round also announced in 2019.
Ai Palette has its headquarters in Singapore and an engineering hub at Bangalore. Its customers began in Southeast Asia and then expanded into China, Japan, and Europe.
Its customers began in Southeast Asia and India and then expanded to China, Japan and Europe. Ai Palette is capable of predicting trends in consumer packaged goods (CPG), and supports 15 languages. The company plans to use its funding to expand into new markets and fill engineering, data science and other roles.
Ai Palette was established in 2018 by Somsubhra GanChoudhuri, chief executive officer, and Himanshu Upreti chief technology officer. They met through Entrepreneur First Talent Investor, which recruits and teams up potential founders.
GanChoudhuri was a sales representative and marketer at Givaudan (the world's largest producer of flavor and fragrances), before joining Ai Palette. He was able to observe how product innovation works for many different types of consumer products. These included snacks, fast food, and packaged goods. Many companies that he worked for realized that a two year product innovation cycle was not sufficient to meet demand. Upreti is an expert in big data analysis and machine learning. He previously worked for Visa where he created models that could handle petabytes.
Foresight Engine is Ai Palettes' first product. It tracks trends such as ingredients and flavors, analyses why they are so popular, predicts how long they will be in demand, and more. It can also identify white space opportunities or situations with unmet demand. GanChoudhuri, for example, said that the COVID-19 pandemic had changed how people eat. People are now eating health snacks up six times per day in front screens to give companies the opportunity to create new products.
Upreti said that Foresight Engine provides contextual information. Is it a food item that is eaten at home or in a restaurant? Are products consumed individually or in a group setting? What is the most popular at children's birthday parties? Images provide information about product pairings as well as product format for a particular product or ingredient.
Data sources include social media, search engines, blogs, recipes and menus, as well as company data. GanChoudhuri said that data sets most relevant to each market are prioritized. For example, a local recipe or an app for food delivery. They are also tracked over time to help determine a growth trajectory with high levels of confidence.
Ai Palettes technology has been used to create new products. For example, brands can launch new flavors in specific countries. The Foresight Engine can help them see which trends are on the rise and which ones have the potential for becoming long-term favorites so that they don't invest in products that may lose their popularity.
Many clients of Ai Palettes have used it to respond to new trends in consumer behavior and consumer behavior during the COVID-19 epidemic. It is not surprising that many people are looking for healthy foods or those that boost immunity. In the United States, acerola, yerba matte and lemon are in high demand.
GanChoudhuri said that in China, taste is more important than health. People are seeking food that restores a sense of normalcy. As people in India continue to deal with the pandemic, they are looking for longer-lasting products. However, many Indians are also searching for interesting snacks to relieve the boredom caused by lockdown. Kimchi and other Korean flavours are becoming increasingly popular.
Ai Palettes' ability to work in many languages is one way it stands out from other machine-learning-based trend-prediction systems. It supports English, simplified Mandarin and Thai as well as Tagalog and Bahasa Indonesian. Plans are to expand the support for Spanish, French, and German in future, especially when it targets Latin America, Mexico, and other European countries.
