Artificial intelligence aims to disrupt a 100-year-old industry.
The search for ways to entice consumers to buy packaged goods dates back to the 1920s, when American psychologist Daniel Starch conducted the world’s first market research.
Today, the global market research industry is Estimated value: $87.7 billion It is expected to grow by another $15 billion over the next four years, with the rise of artificial intelligence being one of the main drivers. Ai Palette is one company looking to lead this change.
Founded in Singapore in 2018, the startup provides artificial intelligence-driven market research and real-time predictive analytics. Competitors include ZoomInfo Sales, Trajaan and Brandwatch Consumer Intelligence, all of which deploy various technologies to comb through consumer profiles and marketing trends.
Ai Palette’s platform has been running for the past four years, leveraging more than 61 billion data points from 24 countries to generate new concepts for brands based on identified trends, transforming traditional market research in the process.
Somsubhra Gan Choudhuri, co-founder and CEO of Ai Palette, said artificial intelligence can take up most of the brainpower normally done by humans.
“For example, if a company wants to launch a new juice in a market like Thailand, our platform will tell them what kind of juice they should launch and how they should position it so that it can be successful in the market,” he said .
“We leverage the power of artificial intelligence to identify the latest trends by analyzing food big data,” he added.
Prior to co-founding Ai Palette, Choudhuri worked in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry.
He said businesses are increasingly unable to keep up with rapidly changing consumer tastes and predict what trends will be popular from one year to the next.
“That’s when I was introduced to artificial intelligence and machine learning. As I learned more and more about it, I realized that it was only a matter of time before artificial intelligence impacted every industry,” Choudhuri said.
Large manufacturers are joining
Part of Ai Palette’s technology includes the ability to analyze up to 39 different factors to predict future trend trajectories.
This has attracted the attention of some of the world’s major food and drink brands, such as Diageo, nestleand Pepsi.
Symrise, a company that works with brands to create ingredients and products such as fragrances, uses Ai Palette to pull data from a range of sources, including social media and online reviews. A single analysis is then released for interpretation by the manufacturer.
Food brand Pringles, known for its flavored potato chips sold in 140 countries around the world, also used Ai Palette to understand snack preferences in four different markets. The platform helps launch localized products in developing markets such as Thailand and Indonesia.
cereal giant KelloggMeanwhile, online content in four languages from Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand was searched using Ai Palette during the Covid-19 pandemic. The cereal maker has managed to identify popular food recipes and incorporate them into new breakfast cereals, such as crispy squid flavour.
Conor Delahunty, vice president of global sensory and consumer insights at Symrise, said that despite advances in technology, traditional methods are still part of the process.
One important factor, at least until now, remains beyond the control of automation and technology.
“We still need to taste the product because our artificial intelligence can’t do that yet,” Delahunti said.
public and private support
As the pace of artificial intelligence development accelerates, so does investor interest. Venture capital firm 500 Global invests in entrepreneurs it believes are building game-changing companies. It has backed more than 2,900 startups with a total portfolio valuation of more than $300 billion.
Vishal Harnal, global managing partner at 500 Global, focuses on startups that focus on “very specific industries” and are “solving big problems that maybe no one is paying attention to right now.”
Ai Palette ticks his investment box.
“What they really like is that we’re trying to disrupt a very large traditional industry, like the CPG (consumer packaged goods) industry, where companies are very traditional and haven’t seen a lot of disruption,” Choudhuri said.
Ai Palette, along with venture investors, is backed by the Singapore government, which has committed more than three-thirds of S$1 billion (US$7.5 million) to AI development to strengthen its AI ecosystem.
Start also Raised $5.7 million in March funding roundthe funds will be used to expand its artificial intelligence insights tools and new “FoodGPT” chatbot.
