Groceryshop 2024 “Shark Reef” Startup Pitch Competition: Recap—12 Innovators, Two Winners

Introduction

Coresight Research is a research partner of Groceryshop 2024, which is taking place during October 7–9 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Groceryshop is an annual conference that helps businesses navigate the evolving grocery landscape, exploring the latest business models, advanced technologies and shifting consumer behaviors.

On the first day of the event, the “Shark Reef” Startup Pitch competition saw 12 early-stage retail-technology innovators compete to win the Judges’ Choice and Audience Choice awards. Deborah Weinswig, CEO and Founder of Coresight Research, emceed the pitch competition and served as lead judge.

We provide a recap of the event, with key insights from the startups’ presentations.

Groceryshop 2024 “Shark Reef” Startup Pitch Competition: Coresight Research Insights

Event Format and Judging Panel

The Groceryshop 2024 “Shark Reef” startup pitch competition comprised two rounds:

• Round 1: All competitors presented for three minutes on how their innovative technologies are addressing important challenges in retail. The judges and audience then rated each presentation, and the six companies that received the highest aggregate ratings progressed to the next round.
• Round 2: The finalists each participated in a more in-depth, five-minute Q&A session with the judging panel. The judges and audience re-rated the finalists to determine the winners!

Weinswig was joined by three expert judges:

• Deepak Jose, VP & Head of Data Science & Business Intelligence, Niagara
• Danielle Lay, Partner at NEA
• Brita Rosenheim, Managing Partner at Vita Vera Ventures

The Startup Pitch judging panel—left to right: Weinswig, Jose, Rosenheim, Lay
Source: Groceryshop

 

Innovative Solutions Across Four Areas of Disruption in Retail

The participating startups satisfied the following selection criteria:

• Business-to-business (B2B) solution
• Founded since 2018
• Scalable—addresses a major retail challenge or opportunity
• Highly differentiated—unique or highly differentiated technology or business model

Coresight Research categorizes the 12 startups into four areas of disruption in retail, as detailed below.

1. Supply Chain and Inventory Management

This category comprises technology companies whose solutions improve supply chain efficiency, inventory management and collaboration among stakeholders.

Startups: bops, Journey Foods

2. Operational Efficiency

This category comprises technology companies that offer platforms to streamline business processes and improve store operations.

Startups: Augmodo, Leav, Machyna, Puller AI

3. Enhancing the Customer Experience

This category comprises technology companies whose solutions focus on enhancing customer services and engagement, such as through personalization.

Startups: Cimulate, Devour, Indellia, Kodif, Rodeo

4. Marketing

This category comprises technology companies that focus on innovative marketing strategies to enhance brand visibility and consumer engagement.

Startups: Hummingbirds

Figure 1. Groceryshop 2024 “Shark Reef” Startup Pitch: 12 Innovators Across Four Areas of Retail Disruption

Source: Coresight Research

 

The Winners

The six finalists that made it through to the second round were Augmodo, bops, Cimulate, Hummingbirds, Modif and Puller AI.

Of these companies, the expert panel of judges selected the Judges’ Choice winner as Cimulate.

The audience-voted Audience Choice winner was Augmodo.

Ross Finman, Founder & CEO of Augmodo (left) and John Andrews, CEO and Co-Founder of Cimulate (right) collect their awards
Source: Groceryshop

 

The Competing Innovators: Pitch Highlights

We detail highlights from each of the innovators’ presentations below, starting with the two winers and then in alphabetical order.

Judge’s Choice: Cimulate

• Presenter at Groceryshop: John Andrews, CEO and Co-Founder
• Area of Disruption: Enhancing the customer experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for Cimulate here.

Conversion is a huge challenge for online brands and retailers. Andrews claimed that “technology and processes underlying the commerce stack have reached their limit.” He explained that an LLM (large language model)-based operating system would provide benefits from huge amounts of encoded data, but said that the use of ChatGPT as a commerce experience server is an unfeasible solution due to significant challenges: It would be slow for commerce, too expensive for enterprise use, and that it would be unable to align a retailer’s objectives.

Cimulate’s solves for these challenges with its CustomerGPT solution. The key idea is that “massive LLMs can simulate customers,” Andrews said. Synthetic data and real customer behavior are used to train CustomerGPT, enabling the generation of personas with shopping habits that can then be used to predict customer choice through “distillation by cimulation.” The result is the real-time optimization of content “based on customer intent, business objectives, variety and newness,” he explained. This model is designed to enhance every touchpoint in the shopping journey by better understanding and predicting customer intent, thereby increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Cimulate’s initial focus is on searching and browsing, but Andrews highlighted that the future of commerce is in optimizing every pixel on the page.

Andrews presents Cimulate’s CustomerGPT solution
Source: Groceryshop

 

Audience Choice: Augmodo

• Presenter at Groceryshop: Ross Finman, Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Operational efficiency
• Download the Innovator Profile for Augmodo here.

Modern retailers often face challenges related to inefficient order-picking processes and the management of out-of-stock items, and these issues can ultimately lead to unfulfilled orders and unsatisfied customers. Finman pointed to the baby formula shortage of 2022 as the origin story of Augmodo: He ordered formula from five stores, all of which claimed to have product in stock but were actually out of stock.

Tracking store conditions is expensive and slow, Finman said, highlighting that manual data-collection processes via field representatives/store audits are costly, and that it is difficult to cover every product, in every store, every day. “Infrequent and stale data is less actionable,” he stated.

Augmodo addresses these challenges with its “spatial AI (artificial intelligence) for commerce” solutions, automatically scan a retailer’s store and build a comprehensive store “Realogram” as orders are processed. This technology requires no pre-mapping, pre-scanning or additional workforce training, making it simple to implement in existing retail environments. With Associate SmartBadges, Augmodo passively audits stores, updating the map every time an associate passes the shelf, resulting in “100X less capex and 10X more data,” Finman claimed. Augmodo’s solutions help track out-of-stocks, improving shelf-inventory intelligence and management.

In addition, Augmodo’s adaptive-routing feature uses the Realogram to optimize route planning based on changing product locations within the store, ensuring that order pickers can efficiently navigate the aisles, reducing travel time and increasing productivity.

Finman explained that Augmodo’s technology is simple and cheap to implement and scale, with a proven store-setup time of less than 20 minutes. Retailers are able to visualize real-time analytics and insights, for actionable outcomes. He discussed the future of retail involving AR (augmented reality) search for shoppers, with at-shelf promotions displayed in real time.

Source: Augmodo

 

bops

• Presenter at Groceryshop: Jorge Risquez, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Supply chain and inventory management
• Download the Innovator Profile for bops here.

In the fast-paced retail environment, consumer brands often struggle with inventory management due to a disconnect in data, which can result in stockouts that frustrate customers, excess inventory that increases costs, and phantom inventory that misrepresents stock levels. Risquez emphasized that “consumer demand is not in sync with inventory flow due to a lack of supply chain collaboration.” He explained that retailers and CPG suppliers can capture the “lost value” by adopting a more connected and automated next-generation supply chain collaboration platform.

The AI-driven Collaborative Inventory Intelligence Platform from bops streamlines the collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR) process for CPG brands and their retail partners by offering real-time visibility into inventory levels and consumer demand, and supply chain collaboration workflows to enable actionability.

By synchronizing inventory with consumer demand, bops provides actionable insights that help brands avoid stockouts and overstocking through improved forecasting accuracy, ultimately improving product availability and customer satisfaction. Risquez discussed a customer success story, where bops’ integrated Smart CPFR and Predictive OSA (on-shelf availability) capability reduced the client’s lost sales by 8% and increased team productivity by 12%.

Risquez pointed to advances in AI and data processing as increasing the opportunity to enable supply chain collaboration by lowering the costs of sharing and processing data. In terms of retail media and data monetization, retailers have an imperative to maximize return on investment for CPG. “There is demand for technology to make data actionable,” Risquez said.

Source: bops

 

Devour

• Presenter at Groceryshop: Shelly Rupel, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Enhancing the customer experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for Devour here.

Traditional food-delivery apps often fail to engage younger consumers, leading to a lack of loyalty and interaction. Devour has developed a marketing and rewards platform that helps brands reach Gen Zers through gaming. Emphasizing the size of the opportunity, Rupel said that there are 212 million gamers in the US (who play at least once a week), and that 64% play PC-based games and 88% eat or drink while gaming.

“It is critical to meet the Gen-Z gamer authentically where they live,” Rupel said. She explained that Devour’s mission is to “unleash the power of play,” driving revenue, loyalty, collaborations and data-driven insights. Through its DevourGO+ app, the company combines food delivery with gaming elements, including AI-driven recommendations and a gamified loyalty program. Users can earn rewards through interactive gameplay, unlocking exclusive in-game perks and enhancing their overall experience, thereby fostering greater customer loyalty and engagement.

DevourGO+ is “creating a new paradigm for gaming, food and brand engagement,” Rupel concluded.

Source: Devour

 

Hummingbirds

• Presenter at Groceryshop: Emily Steele, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Marketing
• Download the Innovator Profile for Hummingbirds here.

Brands often struggle to connect with consumers on a local level, resulting in ineffective marketing campaigns that fail to resonate with target audiences. Traditional advertising methods can feel impersonal and disconnected from the communities they aim to serve.

By facilitating authentic connections between brands and local influencers who understand their communities, Hummingbirds “drives retail velocity through geo-centric word of mouth,” according to Steele. She described “local influencers” as social media enthusiasts who have authentic voices and are local champions, helping local people to discover and buy brands locally.

The Hummingbirds platform enables brands to work directly with local influencers who are already trusted by their audiences, creating highly targeted marketing campaigns involving organic, grassroots content—putting “people-powered marketing at your fingertips,” Steele said. This means that posts are more likely to drive engagement and loyalty among relevant consumers, increasing brand awareness and helping brands to establish real relationships with their target markets. Brands report a 4–14X lift in sales using the Hummingbirds platform, according to the company.

Steele said that Hummingbirds is on track for 4X growth and is on a “clear path” to the first $100 million in revenue in the CPG vertical alone.

Steele answers questions from the judges
Source: Groceryshop

 

Indellia

• Presenter at Groceryshop: Ruby Singh, Co-Founder
• Area of Disruption: Enhancing the customer experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for Indellia here.

Collecting and analyzing massive amounts of unstructured customer feedback from multiple channels—reviews, video content, voice recordings, helpdesk tickets, returns data and surveys—can be overwhelming for brands, Singh said. This results in missed opportunities to identify trends and make informed decisions about assortment that lead to enhanced customer satisfaction and drive business growth.

Indellia unlocks customer insights for CPG and FMCG brands through “AI-powered customer feedback intelligence,” Singh told the Groceryshop audience. Its AI models are trained on CPG data so the platform understands industry-specific language. Singh highlighted extensive data integration, generative AI capabilities, real-time dashboards, custom alerts as key features of Indellia’s solution.

Generating a comprehensive view of customer sentiment, Indellia provides companies with intuitive reports and visualizations that help them make data-driven decisions to proactively address customer concerns and refine their strategies.

Source: Indellia

 

Journey Foods

• Presenter at Groceryshop: Riana Lynn, CEO
• Area of Disruption: Supply chain and inventory management
• Download the Innovator Profile for Journey Foods here.

The food supply chain involves inefficiencies that make it difficult to develop and distribute nutritious products. Food companies face challenges with ingredient sourcing, formulation optimization and supply chain management, leading to delays and increased costs.

Journey Foods is an AI-powered software platform that assists food companies in developing, launching and scaling their products more efficiently. AI-driven ingredient discovery allows users to find suitable ingredients based on criteria such as nutrition, cost and sustainability. Lynn claimed that Journey Foods is “the world’s most actionable ingredient database.”

The platform also provides product formulation optimization, enabling ingredient recommendations and sending supply chain alerts to help improve existing products. Journey Foods offers centralized product management, allowing teams to collaborate and keep track of products in a single platform, reducing communication bottlenecks.

According to Lynn, Journey Foods saves companies “over 68% of combined revenue and time” through AI-driven match and discovery (to suppliers, manufacturers and packagers), live recommendations as regulatory and operational limits shift, and over 320 partnerships and integrations with global supply chain tools and ERP (enterprise resource planning) solutions. The platform helps companies “stay on top of changes alongside policy and macroeconomic impact,” she said.

Journey Foods operates on a subscription model. Lynn revealed that the company has so far raised $2.2 million in funding and has achieved lifetime revenue of $3.8 million.

Source: Journey Foods

 

Kodif

• Presenter at Groceryshop: Mike Zayonc, Co-Founder
• Area of Disruption: Enhancing the customer experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for Kodif here.

As customer expectations continue to rise, businesses are faced with the challenge of providing efficient and effective support across multiple channels. Many companies are dealing with high volumes of inquiries, which result in longer response times and decreased customer satisfaction. This is further complicated by the need for personalized service, which often requires significant resources and can strain customer support teams.

Kodif addresses these challenges by offering “next-generation customer support” through its end-to-end generative AI customer experience platform, Zayonc explained. The solution provides powerful analytics and deep insights. Its Customer Autopilot feature enables customers to independently resolve their issues through various digital channels, such as chat and email automation. By implementing proactive engagement strategies and personalized self-service forms, Kodif empowers customers to find solutions quickly and efficiently.

Kodif also offers an AI-powered Agent Copilot that provides insights and analytics to optimize processes and improve agent productivity. This dual approach not only reduces the volume of inquiries that require human intervention but also allows support agents to focus on high-value tasks, ultimately leading to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Kodif’s customers have “achieved transformative results,” Zayonc said, citing a 40% increase in agent productivity for one client in the past three years and a 30% lift in customer satisfaction score for another client in the past two years.

Source: Kodif

 

Leav

• Presenter at Groceryshop: Olivier Roy, CEO and Co-Founder
• Area of Disruption: Operational efficiency
• Download the Innovator Profile for Leav here.

Leav takes a “composable approach to in-store experiences and checkout,” Roy said. The company set out to make payments in bars and restaurants seamless and then, due the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, pivoted to make seamless retail checkout affordable.

Roy explained that the traditional retail experience is “disconnected from entry to exit,” with a lack of cohesion between physical and digital channels hindering a seamless customer journey, checkout lines leading to abandoned sales and decreased customer satisfaction, and retailers experiencing difficulties tracking the effectiveness of in-store ads and promotions. He added that “investments in composable commerce are challenging to extend into the in-store environment.”

Roy discusses pain points in the in-store customer experience
Source: Groceryshop

 

Leav’s “Unified LiveCart” technology seamless, low-latency (20-millisecond) interactions across multiple touchpoints in retail stores, allowing customers to scan products and complete transactions anywhere in the customer journey by using their mobile devices and preferred payment methods. This technology eliminates the need for traditional checkout lines, enhancing the overall shopping experience by making the checkout process faster. Leav designed its LiveCart solution to layer over existing infrastructure, leveraging both legacy in-store systems and modern composable tools, Roy said.

Leav also offers a mobile point-of-sale (POS) solution for store associates, enabling them to assist customers more effectively. By integrating seamlessly into existing retail systems and environments, Leav’s solution empowers retailers to enhance customer engagement, reduce operational bottlenecks and ultimately drive higher sales.

Roy highlighted that the future of Leav is in deploying retail media campaigns at scale with large retailers and enabling them to create shoppable in-store ads.

Source: Leav

 

Machyna

• Presenter at Groceryshop: Victor Chan, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Operational efficiency
• Download the Innovator Profile for Machyna here.

Grocers today face a host of daunting challenges, from high operational costs and labor constraints to a lack of accessible, actionable data—all compounded by fierce online competition, Chan explained. As such, there is growing demand for solutions that simplify the shopping process while simultaneously maintaining operational efficiency.

Machyna is “digitizing the shopping world,” Chan said, by redefining how data are leveraged in the physical retail environment. “As grocery shopping goes phygital, monetizing in-store behavior offers a golden opportunity,” he asserted, pointing to potential for geo-couponing, AdTech, AI planograms and optimized product placement.

Chan discusses the phygital opportunity in grocery
Source: Groceryshop

 

Machyna’s SmartBaskets and SmartCarts capture in-store shopping behavior, transforming it into rich, value-added data services with AI-enhanced. The company’s intelligent tools engage customers in real time and enable retailers to elevate the shopping experience while unlocking multiple new revenue streams. The SmartBasket features indoor GPS tracking, a scale, AI barcode recognition, and a mobile user interface. The solution has a 54-liter capacity and a battery life of over eight hours, Chan said.

According to Chan, SmartBaskets achieve capital-expenditure return on investment in two to four months, and drive 80% – 90% savings in operational expenditure.

Source: Machyna

 

Puller AI

• Presenter at Groceryshop: Zac Choi, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Operational efficiency
• Download the Innovator Profile for Puller AI here.

The “last-mile data handoff” is a significant challenge in retail, Choi said. Retail and brand organizations often struggle to access data needed for decision-making, relying heavily on IT or engineering teams for support. This technical bottleneck creates a last-mile “data-to-insight gap,” hindering the ability of business users to respond quickly to market changes and customer needs, he explained.

Puller AI addresses this by empowering “anyone on your team to use retail, product and shopper data like an engineer,” according to Choi, offering a user-friendly platform that allows non-technical users to seamlessly retrieve data from various sources, including POS systems, data warehouses, CRM (customer relationship management) systems and spreadsheets. By utilizing AI-powered automation, users can easily ask questions in natural language and receive immediate answers, supporting confident decision-making.

Puller AI emphasizes enterprise security with compliance standards such as SOC 2 and GDPR, ensuring that sensitive data are protected while enabling trusted access. The platform’s ability to connect to multiple data sources provides a comprehensive view of business performance, empowering retail teams to make informed decisions and enhance operational efficiency across their organizations.

Source: Puller AI

 

Rodeo

• Presenter at Groceryshop: Ben Fisher, Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Enhancing the customer experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for Rodeo here.

Among the key metrics that determine an online brand’s success or failure is lifetime value, and “identity is the atomic unit of lifetime value” Fisher said. However, e-commerce brands often face high cart abandonment rates due to cumbersome login processes for returning customers. The friction of resetting passwords or navigating complex logins leads to lost sales and a decline in customer engagement.

Rodeo is a retention-marketing platform designed to enhance the online customer experience by offering a passwordless auto-login feature. This innovative solution enables returning customers to access the checkout page directly from email or SMS marketing without needing to manually log in, significantly reducing checkout friction.

Fisher highlighted critical benefits to brands of enabling “logged in” shopping: These shoppers spend 3–7X more; brands can track 100% of abandoned carts; brands and eliminate login-related support tickets; and the journey for the shopper is streamlined and therefore boosts customer satisfaction.

By integrating with other tools in a company’s tech stack, Rodeo streamlines the customer journey and optimizes sales funnels, improving conversion rates and overall customer engagement.

Source: Rodeo

 

All participating speakers and judges at the Groceryshop “Shark Reef” Startup Pitch competition
Source: Groceryshop