Showing posts with label artificial intelligence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label artificial intelligence. Show all posts

15 September, 2024

AI in RetAil

I had the good fortune to speak early September at one of India’s most prestigious educational institutions, Coimbatore Institute of Technology, which has been a breeding ground for several top technocrats this country has produced. 

Among various notable such people include the current Chairman of the eponymous TATA Group, Mr. N. Chandrasekaran. 

I was invited to speak at RISE 2024, the in-house conclave of the college, where I addressed over 300+ students and faculty members for over 90 mins. 


 

That I succeeded yet again, keeping the audience awake right after the lunch break, has been a sort of a successful streak to me as a speaker across various conclaves, conferences and events worldwide since 2006. 


Perhaps, it was the intriguing subject that I chose this time around, to keep the listeners not just awake, rather get excited about the possibilities that Artificial Intelligence brings to Retail


Way back in the 90s, my first brush with retail was shopping at the ration shop in our locality every month, where I would be assigned by my parents, the task of bringing rice, sugar and kerosene, among other things. 


Why kerosene – we would use them to boil water for bath using a pumping stove! 


Later on, I witnessed firsthand the early days of organised retail in India, with the mushrooming of concepts such as Lifestyle and Shoppers Stop in fashion and the likes Subhiksha, Stop and Shop, Nilgiris and RPG Retail’s Foodworld in grocery retail. 

 

When I joined the erstwhile Madras’ first Baskin Robbins ice-cream parlour as a part time employee in 1997, I witnessed and used the billing machine for the first time, which kept a track of the day’s sales.


From there to now, the use of technology in Retail has not just stunned me, rather has kept me guessing on what’s coming next. 

  


I have been using Apps such as Amazon, Zepto, Swiggy for e-commerce, household and grocery shopping and for ordering food respectively for over a decade now. The amount of machine learning and artificial intelligence used by these companies, especially the likes of Amazon, is very interesting. 

Offline retailers in India have been laggards to embrace artificial intelligence, primarily due to heavy investments that go in to building such modules. However, the choice for them is limited. The writing on the wall is clear - start building AI into your business planning NOW or perish. 

 

One could argue that even a rudimentary ERP is in nascent stages in Indian retail, let alone AI in Retail. However, the choices we have on hand are extremely limited. 



One of the key reasons for loss of sales is not having the right merchandise at stores, and not lack of footfalls. 


Embracing AI / ML is a must for offline retailers, which was the essence of my presentation at the institution. Will share the link of my lecture here, soon. 

A short flight that I enjoyed…

On 4 Nov. ’24, I stepped down from my role as Executive Vice President, Minmini app. Touted as the world’s first hyperlocal social media pla...