Introduction

Coresight Research is a research partner a research partner of Shoptalk Spring 2025, which will take place during March 25–27 in Las Vegas, Nevada, US. Shoptalk Spring is an annual conference that unites executives from retailers, consumer-facing brands and technology vendors across physical stores and e-commerce to discuss the latest trends, innovations and challenges in the industry.

At the event, the “Shark Reef” Startup Pitch will see 12 early-stage retail-technology innovators compete to win the Judges’ Choice and Audience Choice awards. In this report, we preview the competition, covering its format and the judging panel as well as an introduction to each participating innovator.

Shoptalk Spring 2025 “Shark Reef” Startup Pitch: Preview

Event Format

The Startup Pitch competition will comprise two rounds, taking place during the Tech Solution Spotlight track on The Value Stage over the first two days of Shoptalk Spring.

• Round 1: All competitors will present for three minutes on how their innovative technologies are shaking up retail. The first round spans two sessions, with each session focused on one of two areas of disruption (which we detail later in this report). Audience ratings, combined with ratings from the judging panel, will determine the six companies that will progress to the second round.
  • March 25, 4:05 p.m.– 4:45 p.m. PT (local time of the event)—Leveling Up Customer Experience
  • March 25, 4:55 p.m.– 5:35 p.m. PT—Automating and Streamlining Business Operations
• Round 2: March 26, 8:55 a.m.– 9:35 a.m. PT—The finalists will each participate in a more in-depth, five-minute Q&A session with the judging panel.

The judges will then reveal the Judges’ Choice winner, who will win a $100,000 investment from Shoptalk Ventures, courtesy of Commerce Ventures. The Audience Choice winner will be determined based on audience ratings.

Judging Panel

Deborah Weinswig, CEO and Founder of Coresight Research, will emcee the pitch competition as well as feature as lead judge. Weinswig is an award-winning global retail analyst and a specialist in retail innovation and technology. She is a member of the Advisory Board of several accelerators and is involved in early-stage investing through the Hong Kong Business Angel Network (HKBAN) and Golden Seeds. Weinswig is also a member of the board of a number of philanthropic organizations, including GoodXChange (where she is also Chief Research Officer), Soles4Souls and Street Soccer USA. She is an Executive Board Member of The Terry J. Lundgren Center for Retailing at the University of Arizona and an Advisory Board Member of the World Retail Congress, Weinswig also serves as an e-commerce expert for the International Council of Shopping Centers’ (ICSC’s) Research Task Force and was a founding member of the Oracle Retail Industry Strategy Council. She was recently named to the Board of Directors of Kiabi and Xcel Brands, Inc.

Weinswig will be joined on the judging panel by three experts:

• Anna Barber, Partner at M13—Barber leads investments in AI in commerce and the future of work. Recently, she has been thinking and writing about the rise of AI (artificial intelligence) agents and what it means for enterprise and consumers. Prior to M13, Barber was the managing director of Techstars LA and a partner at The Fund LA. She has invested in over 100 early-stage companies and is a former retail and commerce founder and operator herself. She is a former tech founder and a certified executive coach. Barber is the Chair of PledgeLA, an initiative of the Annenberg Foundation focused on diversity in the LA tech ecosystem, and a board member of portfolio companies Maven AGI, Replenysh, Max Retail, Upwards and AllVoices. In 2023, she was listed to Forbes’ 50 Over 50 and Business Insider’s Most Important VCs in Los Angeles.
• Matt Nichols, Partner at Commerce Ventures—Nichols has been an investor in and operator of early-stage technology companies for more than 20 years. At Commerce Ventures, he leads the firm’s retail-tech investing and has led investments in FleetOps, Grabango, Kevel, Mulberry, Pensa Systems, Rally, Simon Data, Syte and Trove.
• Jelena Zec, Partner at Citi Ventures—Zec leads investments in GenAI (generative AI) applications, fintech and commerce at Citi Ventures. Her investment portfolio includes GenAI applications such as Writer and Norm Ai; WealthTech platforms including Wealth.com, Vega and Unlimited; fintech platforms and lenders such as ChargeAfter, Defacto and Anyfin; and payments, cards and commerce enablers like Finix, Tuum, Clara, and Point.me. In her spare time, Zec mentors, advises and angel invests in impact-focused startups and diverse founders. A recognized thought leader, Zec frequently writes on topics such as GenAI in financial services.

Source: Coresight Research

 

Innovative Solutions Across Two Areas of Disruption in Retail

The participating startups satisfy the following selection criteria:

• Business-to-business (B2B) solution
• Pre-Series A—funding of less than $10 million
• Founded since 2019
• 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 two areas of disruption in retail, as detailed below.

1. Leveling Up Customer Experience

This category comprises startups whose innovative solutions can help retailers and consumer brands deliver compelling shopping experiences and exceptional customer service.

• Startups: Big Sur AI, Nectar Social, Novel, PlayAbly, Selectika, Shopeaks

2. Automating and Streamlining Business Operations

From the supply chain to marketing teams, this category comprises startups whose technology solutions can drive efficiencies and boost productivity across retailer and consumer brand organizations.

• Startups: Lica World, Lumi AI, RetailReady, ShopVision, Sotira, Wayvee Analytics

Figure 1. Shoptalk Spring “Shark Reef” Startup Pitch: 12 Innovators Across Two Areas of Retail Disruption

Source: Coresight Research

 

The Competing Innovators

We introduce each innovator in alphabetical order below. Our Innovator Profiles provide more detail on each company.

Big Sur AI

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Vinod Ramachandran, Co-Founder & CEO
• Area of Disruption: Leveling up customer experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for Big Sur AI here.

Big Sur AI is a commerce-first AI platform that helps retailers and brands boost sales and profitability through personalized shopping experiences and task-specific AI agents, including the AI Sales Agent, AI Content Marketer and AI Data Scientist.

Big Sur AI helps teams work smarter, optimize operations and achieve game-changing results in conversions and revenue while maximizing team productivity.

Essen Beauty uses Big Sur AI’s solution to help shoppers make purchase decisions, driving conversion
Source: Big Sur AI

 

Lica World

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Priyaa Kalyanaraman, CEO
• Area of Disruption: Automating and streamlining business operations
• Download the Innovator Profile for Lica World here.

Lica is an AI video-creation platform that enables brands and retailers to scale their video campaigns across multiple channels, maximizing return on advertising spend (ROAS) without increasing budgets. Lica’s AI agents craft, edit and repurpose videos into high-performing multichannel campaigns.

Lica enables clients to edit videos by giving instructions via natural language
Source: Lica World

 

Lumi AI

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Ibrahim Ashqar, Co-Founder and CEO
• Area of Disruption: Automating and streamlining business operations
• Download the Innovator Profile for Lumi AI here.

Lumi is a data analyst that works alongside BI (business intelligence) tools, allowing teams to explore operational data, generate tailored reports, and extract actionable intelligence using a simple chat interface—no coding required. By automating data analysis, Lumi unlocks hidden value, boosts productivity and frees up data teams for strategic work.

Data and analytics as simple as asking a question
Source: Lumi AI

 

Nectar Social

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Misbah Uraizee, CEO
• Area of Disruption: Leveling up customer experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for Nectar Social here.

​Nectar Social’s agentic social commerce platform provides an AI-powered messaging tool that uses large language models and retrieval-augmented generation to allow DTC (direct-to-consumer) and e-commerce companies to connect at scale.

Through Nectar Social’s agentic AI solution, brands can boost product discovery, make recommendations, entertain consumers and drive conversion. The company’s personalization tech includes identity mapping from social to commerce profiles of customers.

Nectar Social’s agentic AI platform helps brands connect with consumers via social media
Source: Company website

 

Novel

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Roger Beaman, Co-Founder and CEO
• Area of Disruption: Leveling up customer experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for Novel here.

Novel enables brands to roll out Apple and Google wallet passes that are directly integrated with a Shopify storefront, unifying the online and in-store experience. The NovelPass solution unlocks a new channel for brands to reach their customers via push notifications, and its pass tiers allow brands to level up loyalty rewards, enhancing customer satisfaction and driving long-term brand loyalty.

Novel’s wallet passes enable brands to communicate with their customers and build long-term loyalty
Source: Company website

 

PlayAbly

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: John Cheng, Founder and CEO
• Area of Disruption: Leveling up customer experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for PlayAbly here.

PlayAbly creates AI-powered shoppable games that transform online shopping into engaging, branded experiences. The platform helps brands drive deeper engagement, build loyalty and showcase their identity through interactive experiences seamlessly integrated into their customer journey. PlayAbly’s games also serve as tools for advertising and user acquisition.

PlayAbly drives 3X engagement and 20% more conversions with branded, shoppable games
Source: PlayAbly

 

RetailReady

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Elle Smyth, Co-Founder and CEO
• Area of Disruption: Automating and streamlining business operations
• Download the Innovator Profile for RetailReady here.

RetailReady aims to help its clients ensure proper shipping compliance, eliminate chargebacks and decrease processing times. Its AI-powered platform combines large language models (LLMs) and computer vision to replace manual warehouses with intelligent, digital solutions. RetailReady delivers proactive compliance checks, a guided packaging process and comprehensive compliance reports.

Source: Company website

 

Selectika

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Tali Bezalel, Co-Founder and CEO
• Area of Disruption: Leveling up customer experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for Selectika here.

Selectika’s AI-powered metadata-enrichment platform enhances product data with detailed style attributes. This leads to superior search capabilities that not only identify products but also understand how they fit within various style contexts. Key features include curated product recommendations through “Shop the Look” and “Complete the Look,” as well as personalized size recommendations. The company aims to help its clients increase conversion, improve average order value and reduce returns.

Auto-tagging by Selectika enables superior search capabilities
Source: Selectika

 

Shopeaks

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Daniel Abitbul, Co-Founder and CEO
• Area of Disruption: Leveling up customer experience
• Download the Innovator Profile for Shopeaks here.

Shopeaks’ AI-powered platform enables brands to create personalized, instant storefronts from their social media content—bridging the gap between discovery and purchase. The company empowers brands with tools to automate, integrate and scale social commerce across organic, sponsored and influencer-driven channels.

By turning social posts into a personalized store for each user, Shopeaks drives conversion and boosts order value
Source: Company website

 

ShopVision

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Peter Sheldon, Co-Founder and CPO
• Area of Disruption: Automating and streamlining business operations
• Download the Innovator Profile for ShopVision here.

ShopVision is an AI teammate for global e-commerce teams. It automates complex, repetitive tasks across campaign planning, competitor analysis, market research and merchandise optimization. ShopVision is trained on historical data from 100,000+ e-commerce sites, spanning online, email and social channels, for insights that are deep and actionable.

Source: ShopVision

 

Sotira

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Amrita Bhasin, Co-Founder and CEO
• Area of Disruption: Automating and streamlining business operations
• Download the Innovator Profile for Sotira here.

Sotira is AI-powered workflow and compliance automation software for reverse logistics. It enables companies to offload and monetize their surplus inventory. Sotira is partnered with leading players in instant commerce and serves distributors and brands.

Source: Company website

 

Wayvee Analytics

• Presenter at Shoptalk Spring: Alex Ovcharov, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer
• Area of Disruption: Automating and streamlining business operations
• Download the Innovator Profile for Wayvee Analytics here.

Wayvee Analytics measures customer satisfaction and purchase intent in brick-and-mortar stores in real time through emotion recognition. Using radio waves and AI algorithms, Wayvee operates without cameras, interpreting emotional responses to deliver insights into shelf and store performance and the overall customer experience. These insights enable retailers to quickly identify and resolve pricing or assortment issues, optimize shelf layout through A/B testing, and implement demand-based dynamic pricing.

The Wayvee sensor boosts shelf performance with real-time insights into customer interactions and reactions to price and assortment, all based on emotional feedback
Source: Wayvee Analytics