These 12 A.I. companies are transforming retail & e-commerce

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Retail e-commerce is one of the biggest revenue making sectors of the enterprise and if you don’t know that already take a quick look at Alibaba and Amazon. Online shopping is yet another sector that is slowly and surely being transformed by AI and scientific breakthroughs have opened the doors for vast amounts of data to be leveraged in the retail market. This big data makes it possible to have AI powered interactions with customers that involve product recommendation, customized searches and even personal assistance.

Here are 12 interesting companies transforming the retail experience for both consumers and businesses through artificial intelligence

Artifacia is a Bengaluru based startup that provides a digital marketing platform designed for fashion and accessory brands. The focus is on merchandise that requires a high level visual experience to sell. Artificia not only use AI technology to link each image with the user’s interests, but also uses all relevant data to recommend suitable products.

Bloomreach is another interesting company that combines machine learning with big data to figure out something particularly useful, intent. Their core technology “The Web Relevance Engine” actually gets smarter with every interaction and is used in their platform to help businesses greet each customer with unique and relevant content.

Infinite Analytics takes personalization to another level by actually maintaining a relationship with each user. Apart from interacting with the user through texts and voice messages, it can identify and find products straight from pictures. This platform can also personalize online shopping websites and communicate search results through Amazon Echo.

Layer 6 AI features a personalization engine that digs deeper than just user behavior and purchase history. This platform actually leverages all your data quickly, accurately and reliably to figure out what your customer wants next. This general purpose recommendation system is powered by deep learning and specifically designed for enterprise customers.

Mona is more than just a platform, Mona is an AI powered personal shopping assistant that learns customer preferences with regards to style and price. Started by two former Amazon.com employees, Mona takes a bit from Siri and adds it to the online shopping experience.

Netomi.com is unique in the sense that it reaches out to consumers through their favorite messaging apps. Since messaging is the most common habit on the smartphone, Netomi.com uses AI chatbots to provide personalized suggestions with respect to the customers tastes in between their Facebook or Whatsapp chats.

Optoro is an interesting company that offers reverse logistics solutions. The fact that e-commerce involves a large amount of goods getting returned and even destroyed, the practice can be unsustainable. Optoro uses their cloud based offering to find good and profitable homes for all those returned goods without any middlemen.

Pinterest lets you play with images, plain and simple. Imagine you have a picture that you need some information on, you can’t exactly scan it into Google but Pinterest lets you do just that. Visual searches allow people to use images in search engines. With the added capabilities of Deep learning algorithms, the platform is then able to find relative information based on billions of other pictures from all over the web.

Sentient was co-founded by one of the inventors of the technology behind Siri and is an intelligent system that does a lot more than just provide recommendations based on user data. Sentient lets users have an actual conversations in the virtual world and features salespersons that adapt their products and catalogues in real time to match your ever changing intent.

SiteZeus as the name suggests aims to be the Greek God of location intelligence. SiteZeus actually uses big data available in geographic locations to help companies make predictions, forecasts and decisions that are location specific. SiteZeus Synergy is the name of their offering designed for retail brands and uses client data and AI technology to provide unprecedented location based intelligence.

Wayblazer is the AI travel advisor and comes with the power of IBM’s Watson technology behind it. A big chunk of e-commerce belongs to the travel industry and Wayblazer aims to enhance the experience with AI. What Wayblazer actually does is digest large amounts of unstructured data and follows it up with sound advice with regards to travel, stay and all related transactions.

Wazzat Labs is a fashion curation platform that lets you save your different looks and outfits from online stores and then uses cutting edge image recognition to help you find similar items from all over the web. This mobile friendly platform integrates well with other apps and essentially gives them “eyes” to see. Focused on the fashion industry, this Hyderabad based startup is all about the looks.

All in all, AI seems to have found a special place in the retail and e-commerce segment of the enterprise. The future will probably usher in new innovations in not just the way we shop, but the very way we search. A lot less dependence on text based searches and more focus on image and voice recognition seems to be the trend here.