Indonesian Retail Tech platform Shooper has raised US$130,000 from undisclosed private angel investors during a pre-seed round. The Shooper app helps families save money on shopping with smart location enabled AI technology, and provides real-time big-data consumer analytics solutions to FMCGs.
Shooper is a consumer analytics startup in the retail tech space, providing data-driven, real-time shopper and consumer insights for brands and retailers. It collects purchase data and gives shoppers value back for scanning their receipts on the app. The receipts are then analysed by the firm’s proprietary technology based on artificial intelligence (AI). Shooper also adds value for consumers by acting as a location-enabled augmented reality layer for real-world price discovery, similar to a “Pokemon Go for shopping” according to Founder CEO Oka Simanjuntak.
This entry into South East Asia’s biggest grocery market is perfectly timed on the heels of the recession brought by Coronavirus. Shooper helps families save money on groceries at the supermarkets by providing crowdsourced price information so that everyone knows which store is cheaper. And FMCGs have access to real-time consumer data that could enhance their competitive advantage during these difficult times.
95% of Indonesia’s US$230 Billion retail grocery segment currently transacts in the real world, meaning Shooper targets a much larger opportunity than pureplay ecommerce players. A recent Mckinsey & Company survey revealed that 82% of respondents stated they would be more frugal, and over 73% continue to prefer offline shopping. Realising that for the grocery segment this number is even bigger, Shooper is serving the need to save money for the vastly bigger chunk of consumers.
Shooper, which was developed when Oka was studying at the MIT Sloan – Columbia University joint Post-Graduate Program in Digital Business, combines IoT with the Indonesian gotong royong habit- a community undertaking to solve a common problem- by crowdsourcing the data for the benefits of many. It is quite simple: users upload their store receipts to get point-rewards, Shooper extract the receipts data creating a massive grocery database engine that all users can search, browse or simply create a long list of groceries for Shooper to find which supermarket is cheapest.
Companies seeking Big Data solutions subscribe on a SaaS basis to allow analytics and data-driven engagement of these consumers. Shooper is unique because of the completeness of the data it gathers compared to others. The key is in its ability to capture many on-app interactions during searching and browsing, allowing Shooper to generate intent to buy data and compare to the actual buy data from receipts. This makes the platform very valuable to companies not just for the data but also for the various engagement possibilities with consumers such as for brand switching and loyalty management.
“In just a few months since we officially launched, Shooper has indexed over 15,000 physical supermarkets and minimarkets across Indonesia. You can now compare prices of over 28,000 unique products. The possibilities this app can offer in terms of monetisation is amazing,” said Oka Simanjuntak.
The feature rich app offers users detailed monthly spending report to help manage the family budget more efficiently down to the detail sub-categories such as fresh-fruits, processed meat, snacks, cleaning products and more. With the universal point-reward feature, users get incentives from receipts of any supermarkets. The points collected can be exchanged for many attractive prizes such as Samsung mobile phones and shopping vouchers. While the recipe feature offers many delicious dishes shared by fellow users, and the ingredients are turned into shopping-lists for Shooper will find the store with lowest prices.