- Ai Palette, a Singapore-based startup, secures $5.7 million in series A1 funding.
- The funding aims to expand its AI-driven platform for food companies and venture into beauty and personal care.
- The platform helps in trend identification, product concept generation, and concept screening.
- Supported by investors Tin Men Capital, Exfinity Ventures, and pi Ventures, Ai Palette’s total funding now stands at $11.2 million.
- The introduction of ‘FoodGPT’ chatbot enhances insights by leveraging proprietary data and internet-scraped data.
- The platform’s real-time insights empower businesses to capitalize on consumer trends, enhancing success rates and revenue growth.
- Major CPG companies like Nestlé, Kellogg, and Cargill have utilized Ai Palette for new product development and market strategies.
Main AI News:
Singapore-headquartered Ai Palette has garnered $5.7 million in a series A1 funding round aimed at expanding its AI-driven platform to aid food enterprises in hastening and mitigating risks in the product innovation process.
Led by new investor Tin Men Capital and backed by existing supporters Exfinity Ventures and pi Ventures, the funding round brings Ai Palette’s total funding to $11.2 million. This injection of capital will facilitate the development of the company’s sales and marketing team, expansion beyond the food and beverage sector into beauty and personal care, and the broadening of the platform’s scope and global footprint.
Established in 2018 by former Givaudan executive Somsubhra Gan Choudhuri (CEO) and big data specialist Himanshu Upreti, Ai Palette has engineered a comprehensive platform that empowers clients to pinpoint trends, conceive novel product ideas, and evaluate them effortlessly, aided by the FoodGPT chatbot.
The platform, embraced by food and beverage giants such as Nestlé, Symrise, ADM, Kellogg, Mondelēz International, Diageo, and Cargill, alongside multinational personal care and beauty firm Himalaya Wellness, comprises three pivotal components:
• Foresight Engine: The foundational insights platform harnesses AI to sift through images and text sourced from retail e-commerce platforms, menus, recipes, social media posts, and search engines across 18 languages in 24 countries, facilitating consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies in identifying unmet consumer needs and emerging trends.
• Concept Genie: A novel tool leveraging generative AI to spawn fresh product concepts based on data from the Foresight Engine.
• Screen Winner: A concept evaluation tool aiding users in assessing the viability of new product concepts within specific categories or markets.
Although traditional methods such as consumer testing remain crucial for refining and validating concepts in real-world scenarios, Ai Palette streamlines the process of identifying trends and requirements in target markets, swiftly generating tailored product concepts that address these needs without the exorbitant expenses, time, and effort associated with traditional market research.
“It accelerates and de-risks the innovation process,” Gan Choudhuri affirmed to AgFunderNews. “Through traditional methods involving coordination with multiple stakeholders and market research firms, creating new concepts could take three to six months. Now, identifying a market need, creating, and screening a concept can occur within a day.”
FoodGPT
Ai Palette’s generative AI chatbot FoodGPT, introduced late last year, augments insights by leveraging clients’ proprietary market reports and other data, which they can upload onto Ai Palette’s platform in addition to internet-scraped data, Gan Choudhuri explained.
“We’re collaborating with select clients on this because FoodGPT is customized for each client, and we establish a private cloud for each company to safeguard its proprietary data from unauthorized access. We’re witnessing significant resonance with this tool among customers because they are accustomed to using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT.”
He added, “Our [new] Concept Genie tool is also experiencing greater popularity than anticipated; every day, clients are generating numerous concepts and images.”
“Ai Palette’s capacity to furnish real-time insights derived from a vast dataset exceeding 61 billion data points empowers enterprises to capitalize on subtle consumer trends spanning diverse demographics and geographic regions. This not only heightens success rates but also propels revenue growth through rapid market penetration strategies.” Jeremy Tan, co-founder and partner, Tin Men Capital
Forecasting Trends
In the long run, AI holds the potential to revolutionize new product development, asserted Gan Choudhuri. By scrutinizing what individuals search for regarding health concerns, their culinary endeavors at home, or their online research, companies can anticipate trends rather than perpetually relying on historical data, he noted.
“The primary benefit lies in reducing the time required for developing new products,” he elucidated. “Furthermore, decision-making hinges on millions of data points rather than feedback from 100 individuals in a traditional market report, enhancing confidence in decision-making.”
“There is considerable demand for generic AI capabilities within the food and beverage community presently, and we are uniquely positioned to address it.“
Case Studies: Cargill, Kellogg
When prompted to furnish concrete instances of how major CPG companies have leveraged Ai Palette in a recent interview, Gan Choudhuri shared insights. “One of the world’s leading alcoholic beverages companies utilized our platform to craft new flavor variants for a vodka RTD drink and swiftly introduce them to the market.”
“In another instance, a client of Cargill sought to enter the plant-based yogurt market in Indonesia. Utilizing our platform, they discerned that it was premature to venture into that specific market with such a product.”
Meanwhile, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kellogg employed Ai Palette to analyze online content from Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand across four languages (Bahasa Melayu, Thai, Tagalog, and English) and identify trending recipes featuring breakfast cereal, such as crispy calamari.
Subsequently, Kellogg utilized this data to launch a social media campaign showcasing recipes incorporating its branded cereals.
Conclusion:
Ai Palette’s substantial funding and expansion signify a growing demand for AI-driven solutions in the food industry. The platform’s success with major players suggests a shift towards efficient, data-driven innovation strategies. This trend highlights a broader industry acknowledgment of the value AI brings in accelerating product development and mitigating risks, setting the stage for continued market adoption.
