SG foodtech startup Ai Palette banks $4.4m to expand customer base

Singapore-based AI foodtech startup Ai Palette announced raising $4.4 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round that will fuel its expansion.

The startup said the funding round was co-led by pi Ventures and Exfinity Venture Partners, who will be sending representatives to join the Ai Palette board.

Existing investors AgFunder and Decacorn Capital have also participated in the funding round, along with new investor Anthill Ventures, who specializes in helping technology startups scale internationally.

The company said it will be using the funds to expand its customer base beyond Asia Pacific and recruit engineering and data science talent to expand platform capabilities and product lines.

Founded in 2018 by Somsubhra GanChoudhuri and Himanshu Upreti, Ai Palette operates a predictive analytics SaaS platform that allows product innovation teams to track trends as they emerge, grow and fade across markets, and predict their trajectory, all in real-time.

The startup counts Danone, Kellogg’s, Cargill, and Dole among its customers.

Ai Palette’s first product, Foresight Engine, tracks the maturity of an ingredient or flavour trend, along with the consumer drivers behind the trend, and predicts the trend’s future trajectory — all in real-time.

Product innovation teams use these insights to conceptualize new products, optimize product portfolios, localize existing product lines, and strengthen reason-to-believe propositions.

GanChoudhuri said Demand for Ai Palette’s solution grew through the pandemic, and this demand is only going to continue as the consumer goods sector accelerates digital transformation and AI adoption.

“From day one, we designed our technology to be relevant globally, and this puts us in a strong position to revolutionize the CPG product development space, where AI can create a $53 billion impact,” he added.

Ai Palette already supports analysis in 15 languages and counting, which allows it to support most of Asia Pacific (including China, India, Southeast Asia, and Australia), North America, the UK, France, Switzerland, and Germany. Support for Mexico, Latin America, more European markets, and the Middle East are in the pipeline.