Palexy, a Vietnamese startup that provides actionable data to help improve the performance of brick-and-mortar retailers, has bagged US$1 million in a funding round led by Access Ventures, with participation from Do Ventures.
The startup will use the money to grow its team, fine-tune products, and expand the business across the region. “We will expand our business to Southeast Asia, Asia and the Middle East in 2021,” Founder and Chairman Thong Do told e27.
Palexy was started mid this year by Thong Do, Minh Truong (co-founder and CTO), and Duc Nguyen (co-founder and Chief Data Engineer). Palexy aims to empower retailers to optimise their customer in-store experience and operational efficiency using Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision technologies.
Palexy mainly offers three SaaS products:
Store Optimiser, which analyses the in-store sales funnel to help retailers improve their operations;
Store Wizard, a virtual shopping assistant which automatically identifies return customers as soon as they walk into the store, their shopping history and preferences. This helps the sales assistants a lot with providing excellent services, especially in high-end stores;
Store Supervisor, which acts as a dedicated security guard, monitoring the store 24×7, detecting abnormal behaviours or frauds and then alerting the staff in real-time.
Palexy’s products are currently used by more than 30 retailer clients in Vietnam and Japan, including brands such as PNJ (jewellery retailer), Guardian (a leading company in beauty and personal care), Viet Thai International, and Aldo Shoes & Accessories Franchisee, Hakuhodo & Square.
According to Do, digitising physical stores to optimise their operation is just the first step of Palexy’s product vision. Ultimately, he added, its AI tools would help connect the physical world with the online world, enabling true omnichannel retail.
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