How Unifynd is helping retailers and malls become digital-ready with its AI-based solutions

Ecommerce has found its way into Indian retail as increased internet adoption even in Tier II, III, and IV towns has led to people relying on online shopping for even their smallest needs. India’s internet economy is expected to double from $125 billion as of April 2017 to $ 250 billion by 2020, primarily backed by ecommerce.

But while it is the era of ecommerce backed amply by the government’s digitisation push, there is still a major portion of the population preferring the traditional retail experience. But how can it be strengthened to survive the increasing threat of online retail?

Jash Choraria (26) wanted to re-envision the traditional physical retail experience by eliminating the hassles that come with it and providing the niche advantages of online shopping.

Jash co-founded Unifynd in 2017 in Mumbai, along with Jeevika Tyagi (29) and Anish Jain (29). The trio launched their first product, FutureRetail.tech, which merges cutting-edge software with intelligent hardware and integrates the tool into the customer’s experience cycle.

Each retail destination is unique and with FutureRetail.tech, retailers can pick, choose, and customise the modules, platforms, and hardware offerings to suit their business requirements. We believe in big data democracy and provide a deeply customised data model for every customer,” Jash says.

In an interaction with SMB Story, Jash explains Unifynd’s offering and how it is helping retailers in this tech-driven society to offer their customers digitised services in their physical presence.

Edited excerpts of the interview:

SMBStory: What is the whole concept behind Unifynd?

Jash Choraria: At Unifynd, we create scalable and user-centric products. We offer software development services to supplement our product development, revenues, and learnings.

Unifynd spent the last two years in creating FutureRetail.tech, a suite of products taking care of aspects like customer-experience, loyalty, and management products for retail enterprises.

It provides a seamless retail experience that creates a harmonious blend of online and offline retail with customer satisfaction at its core. FutureRetail.tech is a comprehensive, one-stop solution for all retail technology requirements.

It is a suite comprising products enhancing customer engagement, loyalty and management for large-scale retail businesses with customer tech solutions, customised data model, and creative and marketing services.

SMBS: Tell us about how you set up Unifynd?

JC: Unifynd was originally established in 2015 as a big data analytics startup. In June 2017, Anish Jain (Head of Product) and Jeevika Tyagi (Chief Marketing Officer) joined and reshaped Unifynd to its current avatar of a company focused on building holistic, user-centric, technology products.

SMBS: Who are your clients and how are you helping them?

JC: At Unifynd, we build technology products, both proprietary and custom solutions for other businesses and offer a range of tech-driven services, from big data analytics to programmatic marketing.

Currently, we are retailing our suite of products from FutureRetail.tech to malls in India, with our first deployment scheduled to go live in June 2019 at Phoenix Marketcity & Palladium, Chennai.

As of today, we have six live custom technology development projects for clients in India and abroad. In India, we are working with West Coast Fine Foods Pvt Ltd (Cambay Tiger) and Argos Greens, to name a few. For both clients, we are building solutions to centralise data collection and augment it with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)-driven decision-making capabilities.

At present, Unifynd clocks a turnover of Rs 1.3 crore.

SMBS: How are you differentiating from the competition?

JC: Our approach to realise our vision is very straightforward: how do we blur the lines between

offline and online experiences by embedding technology in physical retail? We are enabling

retailers to provide a holistic technology experience without making customers download a

mobile application.

The Indian shopper is evolving and takes for granted certain comforts which the online retail boom has provided. Our goal is to leverage those habits and deliver

a superior customer experience alongside increasing engagement and sales for retailers.

SMBS: What are your future prospects?

JC: FY 2019-20 is a big year for Unifynd with respect to realising our business and revenue targets. We plan to have three live deployments of FutureRetail.tech across India, with two proposed deployments already in the pipeline. In addition, we plan on adding three new modules to our suite of offerings in the near future.

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