Introduction

Coresight Research is a research partner of Shoptalk Spring 2025, which is taking place during March 25–27 at the Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas, Nevada. 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 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.

Shoptalk Spring 2025 “Shark Reef” Startup Pitch: Coresight Research Insights

Event Format and Judging Panel

The Shoptalk Spring 2025 “Shark Reef” Startup Pitch competition comprised two rounds:

• Round 1 (March 25): All competitors presented for three minutes on how their innovative technologies are shaking up retail. The first round spanned two sessions, each of which focused on one of two areas of disruption (which we detail later in this report). Audience ratings, combined with ratings from the judging panel, determined the six companies that progressed to the second round.
• Round 2 (March 26): The finalists each participated in a more in-depth, four-minute Q&A session with the judging panel. The judges and audience re-rated the finalists to determine the winners!

Weinswig discussed the history of the Startup Pitch and explained its format and voting process to the audience in a presentation to kick off each session.

Weinswig presents on the Startup Pitch format and introduces the innovators
Source: Shoptalk

 

Weinswig was joined by three expert judges:

• Anna Barber, Partner at M13
• Matt Nichols, Partner at Commerce Ventures
• Jelena Zec, Partner at Citi Ventures

Find more details on the judges in our Startup Pitch preview report.

The Startup Pitch judging panel—left to right: Weinswig, Zec, Nichols, Barber
Source: Shoptalk

 

Innovative Solutions Across Two Areas of Disruption in Retail

The participating startups satisfied 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, Novel, PlayAbly, Selectika, Shopeaks, Veesual

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 Winners

The six finalists that made it through to the second round were Big Sur AI, Lica World, PlayAbly, RetailReady, Shopeaks and Sotira.

Of these companies, the expert panel of judges selected the Judges’ Choice winner as Sotira, which won an optional £100,000 investment from Commerce Ventures.

The audience-voted Audience Choice winner was PlayAbly.

The winners of Shoptalk Spring 2025: Amrita Bhasin, Co-Founder and CEO, Sotira (left); John Cheng, Founder and CEO, Play Ably (right)
Source: Shoptalk

 

The Competing Innovators: Pitch Highlights

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

Judges’ Choice: 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 (artificial intelligence)-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.

In her presentation in round one, Bhasin explained that companies have no consistent ways to monetize their overstocks. When it comes to revere logistics, “building relationships with buyers can take weeks to months” due to all the steps involved, she said. Inventory on the Sotira platform is typically sold within a week, as opposed to months.

In response to a question from the judging panel on how companies are discovering Sotira’s solution, Bhasin highlighted that Sotira has just won a major award from the Reverse Logistics Association. In addition, the company is undergoing robust SEO (search engine optimization) work and benefits from word-of-mouth recommendations.

During the Q&A session in round two, Bhasin revealed that Sotira has seen the most interest in the food and beverage, health and wellness, and makeup categories, as these items have expiration dates. The company is not currently focused on apparel.

Sotira’s typical clients are small physical brick-and-mortar stores in the US. “Our niche is working with American brands,” Bhasin said.

Source: Shoptalk

 

Audience Choice: 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.

Source: PlayAbly

 

According to Cheng, one of the most important questions in the modern retail space is, “How do you find and hold customer attention in this new media world?” He highlighted that Temu spends over $100 million a month in Google ads. The answer? PlayAbly democratizes access to gamification, moving it up the funnel, Cheng said. In the finals, he emphasized that gamification in e-commerce “turns clicks into sales.”

Cheng stressed that the games are “very customizable,” and the company encourages brands to bring ideas to the table. “We believe in a future where entertainment and commerce are combined,” he added. PlayAbly therefore builds games that are focused on the brand, rather than a simple spinning wheel “slapped on top of a website.” The company touts 90%–95% game-completion rates, and games are at least 90 seconds in length.

PlayAbly’s long-term vision is to evolve from its current status as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) business to the operator of a retail network that “sits on top of all the games,” allowing cross promotion and enabling marketing dollars to go further, Cheng said.

Source: Shoptalk

 

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.

“Beyond all there is a big looming question: What is going to happen to online shopping in the age of AI?” Ramachandran said. 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. “These agents are built just for your store,” Ramachandran told the Shoptalk audience.

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

In response to a question from the judging panel about what has surprised the company, Ramachandran said that consumers are thanking the AI for the help provided: “What that told us is that consumers are catching up with this much faster than we anticipated.” Looking ahead, he predicts a major shift in e-commerce toward total hyper-personalization across all e-commerce sites within two years.

In round two, Ramachandran explained why his company focuses on three AI solutions, rather than one: “Our AI agents can work with each other and learn from each other, meaning they can get smarter and better over time. Additionally, the learning curve is harder for retailers if they need to learn three different systems. Having multiple platforms instead of a comprehensive platform is like having teams that do not talk to each other.” Ultimately, Big Sur AI is trying to simplify its clients’ tech stack.

Source: Shoptalk

 

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. Kalyanaraman explained that these agents “make video creation effortless for brands.” She highlighted three opportunities that Lica’s solutions offer:

• Reuse—The AI cuts content into “chapters” that are searchable.
• Repurpose—Chapters can be pulled together in a new way to create new videos.
• Reimagine—Brands can use current trends as inspiration, then Lica produces video from those ideas.

According to Kalyanaraman, Lica is seeing an asset reutilization rate of 75% among larger enterprises, and smaller companies benefit from “increased output creation velocity.”

During the finals Q&A, Kalyanaraman claimed that “video is the new storefront.” She pointed to Lica’s core differentiation as having a core model that can “unlock unimagined possibilities” where the video can evolve with the user and generate new ideas, including “generating code on the fly” to make decisions and create new images.

Lica’s solution is built for design teams that are looking to do more storytelling and focus less on the technical aspects of creating videos. Its biggest capability is in “building brand memories” and building a “giant design brain” from ideas from across PDFs, corporate messaging apps, videos, social media accounts and more, Kalyanaraman said.

Source: Shoptalk

 

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.

Source: Lumi AI

 

Ashqar described the solution as “the future of analytics for brands and retailers.” He explained that using multiple dashboards causes confusion and makes it hard to find data and derive insights. Lumi acts as a “personal data analyst” to remove this operational issue. It also adapts to a company’s “local speak,” per Ashqar.

Lumi AI believes that the future is in agentic AI that alerts companies of insights and potential problems and can take action.

Source: Shoptalk

 

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.

Beaman explained when people think of push notifications, they think of apps, but there is a better way: The NovelPass solution unlocks a new channel for brands to reach their customers via push notifications. In addition, the solution’s pass tiers allow brands to level up loyalty rewards, enhancing customer satisfaction and driving long-term brand loyalty.

Source: Shoptalk

 

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.

Smyth explained that retail compliance is currently done via “100+-page booklets that include hundreds of rules.” Failing to meet these requirements results in fees (“chargebacks”). RetailReady aims to help its clients ensure proper shipping compliance, eliminate chargebacks and decrease processing times.

The 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.

A company using RetailReady recently launched at beauty retailer Ulta Beauty for the first time, receiving 100% compliance, per Smyth.

Source: Shoptalk

 

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. According to Bezalel, “all of the catalog is optimized” with Selectika, as opposed to only 20% via auto tagging. The solution adds 20–23 tags/meta data to each product, which also result in new data that allow retailers to better understand their trends and sales, she said.

Tagging this way leads to superior search capabilities that help customers: “When customers search for what they’ve seen in real life or on social media, they find exactly what they are looking for,” Bezalel explained. In addition to identifying products, Selectika’s solution enables shoppers to understand how products 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.

Source: Selectika

 

Responding to a question from the judges on Selectika’s competitive edge, Bezalel said, “There are lots of options for personalization, but many are very generic that do not fit the fashion industry.” Selectika aims to help its clients increase conversion, improve average order value and reduce returns.

Source: Shoptalk

 

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. “Social media moves fast, but desire moves even faster,” Abitbul said in his presentation. “Traditional e-commerce kills the magic with endless scrolling and long checkout processes.”

Shopeaks empowers brands with tools to automate, integrate and scale social commerce across organic, sponsored and influencer-driven channels. “We turn followers into shoppers,” Abitbul said. The solution combines different data points to build personalized social commerce stores that not only showcase the product the shopper wants but also produce AI-generated recommendations.

In the finals, Abitbul reiterated that Shopeaks is an “AI-powered platform that turns any media into a personalized store in real time.” He added that platforms such as Instagram and TikTok “want the data and the traffic. Our platform provides that to the sellers.” Shopeaks is also a cross-platform solution and creates hyper-personalized pages guided by the brand vision.

Source: Shoptalk

 

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.

Sheldon explained that e-commerce teams are “completely overwhelmed” due to resourcing challenges. “There’s still a lot of guesswork in campaign planning,” he said. ShopVision is an AI teammate for global e-commerce teams to solve for these challenges. 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.

Speaking to ShopVision’s results, Sheldon said, “We’re seeing e-commerce teams breathe a ‘sigh of relief’ as they can get to the tasks that they need to and can unload repetitive tasks.”

Source: Shoptalk

 

Veesual

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

According to Patte, the fashion market is inefficient as online shops cannot answer simple questions, such as whether a garment will fit properly, which leads to abandoned carts and dissatisfaction.

Veesual brings the power of visual AI (artificial intelligence) to fashion e-commerce, transforming how shoppers discover and engage with collections online. Its proprietary technology generates high-quality images of diverse models wearing any product in any size and styling combination—making it possible to display every outfit, worn.

Veesual offers three visual shopping experiences that put the shopper at the center. With “Switch Model,” shoppers can view any item from the collection worn by a model that matches their body type, age and skin tone. “On-Model Look Inspiration” provides curated outfit ideas worn on models, helping shoppers find styling inspiration directly within the product pages. “Mix & Match Styling Experience” lets them compose complete looks in real time, directly on the model of their choice.

Source: Veesual

 

Patte emphasized that by making product discovery more visual, inclusive and intuitive, Veesual drives stronger engagement, higher conversion rates and measurable e-commerce growth.

Source: Shoptalk

 

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.

Due to the high number of SKUs (stock-keeping units), grocery stores “have lots of room for error,” said Ovcharov. To mitigate this challenge, Wayvee Analytics measures customer satisfaction and purchase intent in brick-and-mortar stores in real time through emotion recognition.

Source: Wayvee Analytics

 

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. As Ovcharov explained, the solution “can tell when a customer wants to make a purchase but doesn’t, and uses this data to help retailers dynamically lower prices.”

Ovcharov revealed that Wayvee Analytics is currently looking at how to bring its technology to retail media offerings.

Source: Shoptalk