A Resounding Vote of Confidence in Trigo’s Frictionless Checkout Technology
By: Red Dot Capital Partners
Tags: Retail, Computer Vision

By Danielle Ardon Baratz and Barak Salomon

A year-and-a-half ago Red Dot Capital Partners led an investment in Trigo, an Israeli startup focused on disrupting the global grocery retail industry with a frictionless checkout solution. Since the investment, we have witnessed the continued amazing expansion of its technological capabilities and the growing world of opportunities it is tapping into.

This week, Trigo announced a $60M funding round to fuel its growth and we reinvested — doubled down, actually — confident in the next chapter of the evolution of grocery retail and Trigo’s leading role in it.

Frictionless checkout. Credit: Trigo

The startup and it’s extraordinarily talented team has become the leader in bridging the digital and physical supermarket, developing a grab-and-go solution that does away with the biggest pain point in grocery shopping — waiting at the checkout lane. And it’s chosen the hard path of retrofitting existing stores, rather than constructing custom-built stores, as Amazon Go does, which makes it easier for the technology to work . Trigo’s model gives grocery retail chains the ability to leverage their existing scale and roll out this new experience faster and wider than even Amazon can hope to do.

Trigo’s RetailOS can be deployed at scale and at a relatively low cost to offer a frictionless, trusted, and safe experience for shoppers, while also giving retailers an unprecedented ability to gather and analyze real-time data about their stores. The Tel Aviv-based startup is already working with Tier I grocery companies, one of them being a pilot program with Tesco, the largest food retailer in the UK. They’re also piloting with Shufersal, Israel’s largest grocery chain.

Trigo’s proven, world-class technology is based on 3D mapping, computer vision, and machine learning combined with off-the-shelf hardware such as cameras, and a mobile app. The company applies its proprietary algorithms to capture anonymized data on shoppers’ movements and product choices, allowing customers to walk into a store, select their items, and be on their way. The system compiles the items into a virtual shopping list and payments and receipts are handled virtually.

We believe Trigo is primed to tackle the next major breakthrough in grocery retail after automation — real-time data insights and personalization — tools that have mostly remained in the realm of e-commerce. Since launching its checkout-free platform, Trigo has also leveraged its advanced technologies to offer additional solutions such as predictive inventory management, security and fraud prevention, and in-store analytics.

When we use sites like Amazon or eBay, they can immediately glean so many things about us just in the first few minutes, and they use this data to fuel recommendations and offer items they think we may buy. There are currently numerous startups, including in Israel, that are focused on this particular portion of the data. But none offer solutions for the physical retail industry.

The global grocery retail market may be a multi-trillion dollar industry, but not much has changed about in-store grocery shopping in about a generation. The last time there was any meaningful innovation in the grocery space was the introduction of the bar code some 35 years ago. While e-commerce has driven massive technological transformations these past few decades, and has taken over major sectors such as apparel, books, furniture, and consumer electronics, grocery retail is for the most part still very much physical.

COVID-19 has forced a change of behavior — suddenly crowded stores and long waiting lines at checkout counters became a danger to public health. Social distancing orders combined with restaurant closures led to growth across the entire grocery industry and an acceleration of online buying. Still, online grocery shopping is not expected to exceed 10 percent of the total grocery shopping market in the next decade. In Europe, online grocery penetration has remained relatively low with a growth rate of less than 1 percent in Western Europe between 2015 and 2019, according to a Goldman Sachs report from July. Despite the rise of online shopping, brick and mortar stores — especially in grocery retail — are not going anywhere.

Stores of the future

Driven by consumer behavior, grocery retailers are actively seeking out solutions that will help shape the supermarkets of the future, enhance customer in-store experiences with seamless, convenient shopping, and offer multiple services. The grab-and-go solution is a crucial pillar. Personalization and data-driven insights are the next milestones. Trigo’s closure of a $60 million B Round, with our participation, is a vote of confidence in the company, its brilliant team, and its technology. We’re excited to see how the platform will be rolled out over the next few years to create a new kind of user experience for brick and mortar retail.