Foodtech startup Ai Palette has raised $4.4 million in a funding round led by venture capital firms Exfinity Venture Partners and pi Ventures with participation from Anthill Ventures. The startup’s existing investors Decacorn and AgFunder also participated in the funding round
Ai Palette that uses artificial intelligence to predict trends in real-time for FMCG companies has managed to raise $5.5 million as funding so far, including the latest funding.
The company is based in Singapore, with an engineering hub in Bangalore. Ai Palette client base began in Southeast Asia, before it expanded to Japan, China, Europe, and the United States. The startup claims that it supports 15 languages including Chinese, English, French, Spanish, and Arabic which is the highest for any artificial intelligence-based tool for predicting consumer packaged goods trends.
Being “language-agnostic” is what setting Ai Palette apart from other startups that are offering trend-spotting services for the agri-food industries. This has helped them to offer coverage globally. Ai Palette’s tool provides a richer context to trend analysis as it can also process images.
The startup will be using the fresh funding to expand into new markets beyond the Asia-Pacific region and hire resources for its data science and engineering roles. Funding will also be used to deepen its engagements in South-East Asia and India. By the end of this year, the company also plans to double up its customer base. The startup has presently 30 employees across Singapore and India and plans to grow that 3x in the next one year.
According to the co-founder GanChoudhari, the demand for Ai Palette solutions have soared during the pandemic and has also helped the startup attract prospective investors. The COVID-19 outbreak has also shaped the startup’s research output, as consumers try to make sense of changing consumer preferences and concerns during this time.
About Ai Palette
The startup was founded in November 2018 by Himanshu Upreti, an ex-Visa big data professional and Somsubhra GanChoudhari, a former Givaundan exec. It is a well-known AI platform across the globe for FMCG product innovation.
The startup creates engaging product concepts in line with a brand personality and its existing product portfolio. Ai Palette achieves this by gathering insights from millions of data points from social media, the internet and an array of other sources. It then pairs them with the company data to create product concepts that addresses the future customer preferences as far in advance as possible.
Ai Palette’s software Foresight Engine tracks the maturity of a customer trend around a given flavor or ingredient and forecasts that trend’s future course.
The startup has worked with six Fortune 500 companies and brands that use Ai Palette’s software include Kellogg’s, Danone, Dole, and Cargill. They use this software to come up with new product concepts and reposition existing products for new markets. These companies pay a tailored subscription according to the categories and territories as per their preference.
Discussion about this post