Sadique Ahmed Mohamed, Founder & CEO, Pathfinder talks about RetailGPT and how it seeks to redefine retail for all stakeholders, including shoppers
Launched recently at the Phygital Retail Convention, RetailGPT by Pathfinder claims to revolutionise physical retail by creating personal digital avatars that simplify shopping through conversational AI.
As the retail sector continues to grow, RetailGPT represents a critical step forward, combining robust AI-driven insights with user-friendly technology to create experiences that are not only efficient but also engaging.
In an exclusive interaction with IMAGES Retail at Phygital Retail Convention 2024, Sadique Ahmed Mohamed, Founder & CEO, Pathfinder talks about RetailGPT and how it seeks to redefine retail for retailers, shopping malls, airports, and other players.
What is the concept of RetailGPT?
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Retail GPT is a disruptive platform, which creates thousands of personal Artificial Intelligence (AI) for shoppers. It creates business AI for retailers and other stakeholders like shopping centres and airports. It is based on the latest GenAI (Generative Artificial Intelligence), which is completely conversational in nature. With this, shoppers can discover stores or malls near them and look for products, through prompts.
Going ahead, they will be able to complete the transaction with just two prompts. This is where we are redefining how phygital commerce is going to be.
Can you elaborate?
We are empowering brick-and-mortar stores by enabling them to enhance their physical experience, digitally. With this, stores will be able to compete head-on with e-commerce by offering merchandise with the same convenience. A huge amount of engagement happens in this process. We even have badges that denote the spending in a category or a mall. It is complete customer engagement with a digital experience.
How did this idea come about?
In Saudi Arabia, all the airports are on our platform for revenue data assurance, which has been our primary offering.
It was an innovation back in 2009 when it was impossible to seamlessly capture sales data. We innovated that process and became market leaders. Today, we have over 10,000 retailers on our platform whose everyday sales data has already been captured. In the last six, or seven years, we have been closely watching what can fuel the growth of retailers. To address that, developing RetailGPT was a natural progression.
How will it help retailers?
Even the most organised retailers do not know all their customers, which is a huge challenge for them. The industry average of knowing the customers is 10% and this mostly includes knowing phone numbers and names. Despite digital marketing and social media data, retailers do not know details like spending behaviours and shopping habits.
RetailGPT will help retailers know around 40%-50% of the shopping behaviour of their customers, thus helping them personalise better.
Apart from that, retailers can offer a digital catalogue as well as complete ordering fulfilment from the store.
And how will it improve customer experience?
If someone wants to search for a particular store in a mall, s/he can open the app and ask RetailGPT. The app will open the map of the mall and show the shortest direction to reach the desired store.
Apart from that, customers can also learn about experiential and other notifications offered by the mall, instantly.
Who owns the data?
The data is owned by the respective shopper, and he is in control of its ownership. We are focused on data residency rules and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regulations to ensure that nobody misuses the data.
RetailGPT is a custodian of the behavioural data of each customer. Customers are offered gratification in exchange for sharing their behaviours. This is how the ecosystem is built.
What kind of support does Pathfinder provide retailers adopting RetailGPT?
The beauty of this adoption it is self-served. There is no need for any integration. The retailer signup is online. As soon as we enable a city with the local delivery partners onboarded, any retailers in the city can sign up.
The moment a retailer signs up, his AI is created, and it asks questions to the retailer. For example, what software are they using; queries related to the database and CSV (Comma Separated Value) of the items and price lists. It is a conversation that happens between the AI and the store and after that the retailer is live.
The retailer can also converse with the app about sales, inventory, and merchandise. He can easily compare the data related to all these things daily. It is as easy as conversing.
What is your marketing strategy?
We are going to reach out to all retailers. The approach is to sign partnerships city wise. Every shopping centre and brand in this ecosystem can be a partner. After onboarding businesses, we will launch it to the public in August.
Which market are you focusing on currently?
India is our first market and by the end of the year, we will be probably in four markets, where Pathfinder is already present.
We have been in retail for the last 15 years and work with shopping malls and airports. We have over 150 shopping centres in India as our customers along with shopping centres and airports in Saudi Arabia and UAE. Sri Lanka is the fourth market where we are present. We will be tapping new markets next year onwards.
