The consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry has a problem with short product life cycles. CPG companies often face restricted timelines and high costs associated with identifying, validating research for, and creating hyperlocalised product concepts. This is a problem that AI Palette wants to solve with its AI solutions.

CPG has been lagging in AI adoption compared to other industries, such as healthcare or fintech, according to Kasun Perera, Head of Data Science, AI Palette, in a conversation with e27. Meanwhile, the use of AI can be helpful in areas such as product innovation.

“The CPG sector, when they want to introduce or even renovate new products to the market … there is a 90 per cent failure rate,” Perera says.

The reason behind this high failure rate is the research process itself. Companies will perform a go-to-market survey of 1,000-2,000 customers about what they want in a product, then perform data crunching to develop product ideas. Even if the process results were accurate, a product innovation likely takes at least 12 months to complete. By the time the product is out, there is a possibility that the trend has already changed.

This is why AI Palette developed a Gen AI-powered platform to reduce research and marketing costs for CPG brands by providing them with the ability to identify consumer trends as they emerge, facilitating the rapid development of new food product concepts that resonate with market preferences.

Its Creative Suite offers FoodGPT, an F&B domain-specific conversational agent that enables users to quickly discover insights on trending ingredients and consumption themes across countries and categories, complete with references and source citations. It can even go as far as envisioning how the product can be launched in the market by generating image collateral for product packaging and even suitable marketing campaigns.

Also Read: Transforming customer service: AI’s “artificial empathy” holds the key

AI Palette works with 61 billion F&B domain-based data points accumulated from over 150 data sources. It helps companies such as Monde Nissin, Kellogg’s, Olam Food Ingredients, Symrise, and Nestlé accelerate their new product development cycles.

“AI Palette collects the data from consumer footprint from multiple different sources. When you go in and have something from a fancy restaurant, you may actually post that on social media. You may order something from FoodPanda, buy groceries from e-commerce platforms, or share recipes … These are not asked from the customers. These are genuine feelings that they are putting up there,” Perera explains. “If we can tap into that, it is going to [lead into] an organic conversation.”

In the last five years, AI Palette has been collecting data from 24 different countries in 18 different languages.

“Navigating through this massive amount of data was quite hard for our users; they were also always looking for an easy experience. Then Generative AI comes in to help us,” he says. “You simply ask the question, what are the top trending ingredients in a beverage category in Australia? If you want to develop a new product, then this is a question you can ask instead of having five different clicks. The system can easily answer because we already have that crunch data in our database.”

“It’s just like asking insights from your colleague in the same office.”

AI Palette mostly works with sales, marketing, and brand managers for CPG companies.

Most of their existing users are already users of the company’s other solutions. The Gen AI tools are being sold on top of these tools as a value-added service.

Also Read: How Transparently.AI uses Artificial Intelligence to detect accounting manipulation, fraud

Building an AI company in Singapore

AI Palette’s Creative Suite, including FoodGPT, was crafted using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform and foundational models as part of the AI Trailblazers initiative.

For AI Palette, the choice of Singapore as a development hub stems from the supportive government initiatives, industry readiness, and robust infrastructure, with cloud providers such as Google Cloud facilitating advancements in generative AI. The strategic location enables swift prototyping and validation crucial for Generative AI, given its inherent costliness, according to Perera.

Furthermore, Singapore serves as an ideal base for AI Palette due to its diverse talent pool. The company’s tech team comprises individuals from Bangladesh, India, China, and local Singaporeans, creating a dynamic mix of skills and perspectives. Additionally, Singapore’s status as the Asian headquarters for many of AI Palette’s customers facilitates streamlined communication and collaboration, contributing to the overall success of its AI initiatives in the region.

AI Palette is run by a total of 80 people in three different locations: Singapore, India, and the US.

The company has operated for about five years; it started as an incubatee at Entrepreneur First. Its latest funding round was a Series A in 2021.

“The big plan is to push more and more on the Generative AI side … building these conversational AI capabilities into the CPG sector,” Perera closes.

—

Image Credit: AI Palette

The post How AI Palette wants to help CPG companies develop products faster and easier with AI appeared first on e27.