(L-R) Palexy co-founders Minh Truong, Thong Do and Duc Nguyen
Palexy, a Vietnamese startup that provides actionable data to help improve the performance of brick-and-mortar retailers, has bagged US$1 million in a funding round led by Access Ventures, with participation from Do Ventures.
The startup will use the money to grow its team, fine-tune products, and expand the business across the region.
“We will expand our business to Southeast Asia, Asia and the Middle East in 2021,” Founder and Chairman Thong Do told e27.
Palexy was started mid this year by Thong Do, Minh Truong (co-founder and CTO), and Duc Nguyen (co-founder and Chief Data Engineer).
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The trio started the venture to bring two missions together: to put the technological potential of Southeast Asia to use, and shake up the retail market.
“When I talked to many frustrated business owners in the region, I got the feeling that they still wanted to grow and improve but they have simply exhausted all available options. I wanted to show them that with the help of technology, there is still a lot of room for progress,” he said as he described his startup journey.
If you look at e-commerce, the industry is thriving because it makes use of online user data to incessantly optimise its processes. “We, at Palexy, could help retailers achieve that level of success with real-time data generated from consumers. With our solutions in place, our clients could break ceilings they were not even aware of,” Do said.
In a nutshell, Palexy aims to empower retailers to optimise their customer in-store experience and operational efficiency using Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision technologies.
“If you are the owner of an e-commerce company, you can log in to see all the data points such as the number of visitors (per day, week, month or year), the timing and duration of their visits, and the keywords used to lead them to your site, etc.,” he said.
“But if you run an offline store (for example, a clothes retail shop), all you will see at the end of the week is nothing but the point of sale (POS) data,” he elaborated.
Also Read: How your shopping habits are shaping the future of retail in Singapore
This is where Palexy comes in handy as it brings in e-commerce-like actionable data to help offline retailers perform better.
Digitalising everything
“Data analytics is where offline retail is substantially falling behind and losing the battle. What offline retailers need is a full package technology solution that allows them to see the big picture as well as their online competitors,” he said.
“We crack this problem with our AI-powered SaaS tools that digitalise everything: every customer touchpoint, every interaction and every in-store process. We take into account all available data sources (such as surveillance camera feeds, POS data, promotion calendar and even weather data) and convert them all into actionable analytics dashboards,” he elucidated.
Palexy mainly offers three SaaS products:
Store Optimiser, which analyses the in-store sales funnel to help retailers improve their operations;
Store Wizard, a virtual shopping assistant which automatically identifies return customers as soon as they walk into the store, their shopping history and preferences. This helps the sales assistants a lot with providing excellent services, especially in high-end stores;
Store Supervisor, which acts as a dedicated security guard, monitoring the store 24×7, detecting abnormal behaviours or frauds and then alerting the staff in real-time.
Palexy’s products are currently used by more than 30 retailer clients in Vietnam and Japan, including brands such as PNJ (jewellery retailer), Guardian (a leading company in beauty and personal care), Viet Thai International, and Aldo Shoes & Accessories Franchisee, Hakuhodo & Square.
Future plans
According to Do, digitising physical stores to optimise their operation is just the first step of Palexy’s product vision. Ultimately, he added, its AI tools would help connect the physical world with the online world, enabling true omnichannel retail.
“The thing is that while shoppers still prefer brick-and-mortar stores in general, the majority of them like brands that have both an online and offline presence. That allows them more options and flexibility,” he said.
“The shopper analysis tools we offer are especially useful for retailers that fit that description. Data taken from the online channel could benefit the offline stores’ operations and vice versa, empowering the retailers tremendously,” he further shared.
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For example, when a brand runs a digital marketing campaign, Palexy’s technology can help measure the effectiveness of that campaign in the stores, both quantitatively and accurately.
In yet another use case, by using Palexy’s tools to analyse the demographics of in-store purchasers, the client can identify the demographics of the buyer group that has the highest conversion rate.
“Using these insights, the client can design a promotion campaign that is specifically tailored for that customer group, driving higher conversion for the e-commerce channel,” he said.
A serial entrepreneur, Do previously built Arimo, a Big Data company based in California, which offers Data Science as a Service for global enterprises. The venture managed to raise over US$13 million from VCs such as Andreessen Horowitz before being acquired by Panasonic in October 2017.
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Image Credit: Palexy
The post (Exclusive) Palexy picks US$1M funding to help offline stores achieve e-commerce-like success through real-time consumer data appeared first on e27.