Shoptalk Europe 2023 Startup Pitch Competition: Preview—10 Innovators, Three Areas of Retail Disruption

Introduction

Coresight Research is a research partner of Shoptalk Europe 2023, which will take place during May 9–11 in Barcelona, Spain. Shoptalk Europe is an annual retail conference focusing on retail innovation.

The Coresight Research team will participate in two sessions during the conference—see our Strategic Guide to Shoptalk Europe 2023 for more details.

In addition, on May 9, 2023, Coresight Research will host the Startup Pitch competition, which will see 10 early-stage retail-technology innovators compete to win the Judges’ Choice and Audience Choice awards.

In this report, we present a preview of the pitch competition, covering its format and the judging panel as well as a profile of each participating innovator.

Shoptalk Europe 2023—Startup Pitch Competition: A Preview

Event Format and Judging Panel

The Shoptalk Europe 2023 startup pitch competition will comprise two rounds across two sessions through the day:

• Round 1. All competitors will present for three minutes on their innovative technologies that are solving important challenges in retail. An expert panel of judges will lead a short Q&A session following each presentation, before selecting a shortlist of companies to progress to the next round.
• Round 2. The finalists will each participate in a more in-depth Q&A session.

The judging panel will then reveal the Judges’ Choice winner, and the audience will have the opportunity to cast their votes for the Audience Choice winner.

Deborah Weinswig, CEO and Founder of Coresight Research, will emcee the competition, in addition to participating as one of the judging panel. She will be joined by two expert judges:

• Carolin Wais, Partner EMEA Ventures at Plug and Play
• Carles Ferrer Roqueta, General Partner at Nauta Capital

Innovative Solutions Across Three Areas of Retail Disruption

Coresight Research categorizes the 10 startups into three areas of disruption in retail.

1. Marketing and New Business Models

As consumer shopping habits and channels continue to evolve, innovators are creating solutions to help brands and retailers sell in new channels and in a more efficient manner.

Companies: Rentle, SegmentStream

2. New Ways To Engage Consumers

Retailers are embracing new technologies such as video, AI (artificial intelligence) and Web3 to go where consumers are, engage them there and generate loyalty.

Companies: Metav.rs, Primis, Radd., Sociate.ai

3. Optimizing Operations and Sustainability

To meet consumer and regulatory demand for greater sustainability, retailers are adopting tools to analyze and help reduce the environmental impacts of their operations (including in last-mile delivery) and improve efficiency through more accurate forecasting.

Companies: Hyran Technologies, Inoqo, Quiver, Syrup Tech

The Competing Innovators

We profile each of the innovators below—including the speaker who will present on the company’s solution at the pitch competition—in alphabetical order.

Hyran Technologies

• Speaker: Dr Ahmed Zaidi, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of disruption: Optimizing Operations and Sustainability

Founded in 2022, Hyran Technologies is an AI-powered platform for supply chain management in the fashion industry. The platform is collaborative and enables suppliers to leverage supply chain data in real time, improving production visibility and planning to effectively respond to consumer demand and reduce waste.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Hyran Technologies.

Inoqo

• Speaker: Markus Linder, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of disruption: Optimizing Operations and Sustainability

Inoqo is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that combines public and private data alongside an AI-powered algorithm to help grocery retailers, food and beverage brands and suppliers assess, communicate and action the socio-environmental impacts of their products and ingredients. Inoqo aims to help consumers make more environmentally and socially conscious choices through clear product labeling and retailer transparency around their environmental impact.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Inoqo.

Metav.rs

• Speaker: Simon Foucher, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of disruption: New Ways To Engage Consumers

Metav.rs provides a no-code content management platform with integrated apps to help brands and retailers operate in the metaverse in a centralized manner, enabling them to better manage Web3 assets, websites and virtual worlds. The company aims to democratize access to the metaverse and enable Web3 brands and retailers to integrate content into virtual worlds more easily. Metav.rs is interoperable between major metaverse platforms and social media networks, and is compatible with major e-commerce platforms and payment systems.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Metav.rs.

Primis

• Speaker: Rebecca Griffiths, Founder & CEO
• Area of disruption: New Ways To Engage Consumers

Primis is a digital-first customer experience (CX) platform that focuses on enhancing interactions between consumers and retailers to improve post-purchase customer experiences. The platform offers visually engaging formats and live updates, with features including personalized, event-driven emails, order recaps and product recommendations. Primis provides usable data that helps retailers understand the entire consumer journey. It also offers sustainability solutions, such as tree-planting initiatives and direct carbon offsetting.

Products include Primis Track (for shipment tracking), Primis Ship (for cross-border parcel management) and Primis Returns (to help merchants automate returns, increase loyalty and drive exchanges over returns).

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Primis.

Quiver

• Speaker: Matthew Barrie, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of disruption: Optimizing Operations and Sustainability

Quiver is a logistics technology provider that enables online retailers to offer different fulfillment options, such as same-day delivery, scheduled delivery or in-store pickup. The central dashboard allows retailers to monitor inventory levels, combining fulfillment preferences with Quiver’s location prioritization algorithm to embed delivery options at checkout and deliver orders as fast as possible to the customer.

Quiver describes itself as a “climate first” company; it enables retailers to track and reduce their impact on the environment, saving carbon-dioxide emissions through more efficient, AI-powered routing as well as by using electric- or human-powered vehicles for deliveries.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Quiver.

Radd.

• Speaker: Sivan Baram, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of disruption: New Ways To Engage Consumers

Radd. is an e-commerce intelligence platform that provides video-marketing software for online brands and retailers, enabling them to host customer and influencer UGC (user-generated content)—including livestreams and shoppable story-like video reviews—on their websites, to drive traffic, engagement and conversion.

Radd. leverages AI to personalize the curation of story review videos displayed based on each website visitor’s shopping history, in order to enhance engagement and drive sales. Radd.’s platform also enables brands and retailers to access analytics to monitor video performance.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Radd..

Rentle

• Speaker: Tuomo Laine, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of disruption: Marketing and New Business Models

Rentle is a circular-commerce software platform that supports new retailers looking to start a rental business or existing retailers looking to try out the rental business model. Rentle offers inventory management and digital catalog creation as well as a store management platform.

Rentle believes that most commerce software is designed for selling ownership, not access. Through its platform, Rentle enables retailers of all sizes to explore the rental opportunity, selling access to shoppers while retaining control of the customer relationship. In addition, the company aims “to accelerate the sustainable consumption of durable goods.”

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Rentle.

SegmentStream

• Speaker: Constantine Yurevich, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of disruption: Marketing and New Business Models

Founded in 2018, SegmentStream is a conversion modeling platform that helps brand advertisers understand how ads are performing across different digital channels. It leverages machine learning (ML) to track each unique visit on a retailer’s website and predicts the future chances of conversion for every shopper who views the ad. SegmentStream attributes the modeled conversion to the traffic source when the probability of purchase is high. This attribution helps advertisers quantify the impact of their marketing initiatives and efficiently allocate resources to relevant ad platforms.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for SegmentStream.

Sociate.ai

• Speaker: Yasmin Topia, CEO
• Area of disruption: New Ways To Engage Consumers

Sociate.ai is a creator of chat applications with built-in generative AI, providing interfaces that make it easier for people to interact with and train chat applications, enhancing the customer experience. With the ability to actively learn, Sociate.ai’s AI technologies generate and ask appropriate questions to encourage customers to share relevant information and to offer them good recommendations.

Sociate.ai also developed a function targeting the fashion industry: cFIRST (Curious Fashion Intelligence Recommendation and Styling Technology) combines computer vision with natural language processing (NLP) capabilities to make recommendations. In March 2023, Sociate.ai launched its Maia generative AI chatbot, which can help fashion brands and retailers integrate generative AI into their websites.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Sociate.ai.

Syrup Tech

• Speaker: James Theuerkauf, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of disruption: Optimizing Operations and Sustainability

Founded in 2020, Syrup offers an AI-powered platform that helps omnichannel brands and retailers optimize inventory management. The platform uses ML algorithms to analyze historical sales data, market trends and other factors to provide accurate demand forecasts and inventory recommendations. It also offers tools for automating inventory allocation, managing purchase orders and optimizing inventory levels across multiple channels.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Syrup Tech.