Inspector Cloud, an AI SaaS company that has been developing a solution that automates the work of merchandisers and sales representatives, has raised a new round of investments from the OKS Group fund, founded by Oleg Polyakov and Kirill Matveev. The total investment amounted to $500,000 USD. The funds are to be used for expansion into the European and Latin American markets.
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Inspector Cloud is a Computer Vision SaaS that helps sales reps of CPG companies to check on their shelf KPI through recognition of the goods. Inspector Cloud reduces the time of the merchandiser’s visit to the stores, as there is no need to make a manual counting of the goods facings, and it suffices to take several photos. This increases the accuracy of data from retail outlets, saving on the working time of the merchandiser and his supervisor, who also do not need to manually engage in manual counting of goods.
Inspector Cloud has been able to secure some big-name clients, including PepsiCo, Unilever, Nestle, Schwarzkopf, Henkel, PMI etc.
“The crisis is not a reason to pause investments. On the contrary, now it is especially important to support promising Russian developers and give them additional opportunities for development,” says Mark Hanney, managing partner of OKS Group. “Regarding the deal – Inspector Cloud is a sustainable company with a strong technology base. We are confident that it will continue to actively grow.”
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By the end of the first half of 2020, the number of photos processed has already exceeded 30 million, which is a 7x increase compared to 2019. This makes Inspector Cloud one of the fastest-growing Image Recognition startups in retail space.
This is not the first round of investments for Inspector Cloud. In 2017, the company raised $150,000 USD, where “The Untitled ventures” acted as one of the lead investors, and in 2018 – $200,000 USD angel investments were reached at the seed stage. Those funds were used to refine the product development. At the present time, the Inspector Cloud leadership plans on investing into expansion to promising foreign markets.
“First of all, we focus on countries with a relatively large population, in which a significant market share is occupied not by retail chains, but by small convenience stores,” comments Alexander Berenov, CEO and founder of Inspector Cloud. “We plan to increase sales in Eastern Europe, Poland in particular, and in Latin America, starting with Brazil.”
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