Disclosure: AFN’s parent company, AgFunder, is an investor in Ai Palette.
Food trend-spotting platform Ai Palette is expanding its business to the United States to help consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies better identify consumer preferences and market trends and speed up the product development process.
The Singapore-based company has also launched a new tool, Screen Winner, which it says will let food brands reduce product concept testing time from months to just days.
On background:
CPGs can use the Ai Palette platform to screen their concepts for food and beverage items and determine which will make the most sense for a particular category or market.
- The company’s current product, Foresight Engine, uses artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to scrutinize billions of data points in real-time about market trends and consumer perceptions around various products and ingredients.
- The software can quickly identify the viability of certain ingredients and flavors based on this data.
- Ai Palette’s platform works across most sectors, including bakery, confectionery, beverages, dairy products, sugar-reduction foods, plant-based foods, and ready-to-eat items.
On expansion:
The US expansion, first announced in 2021 when the company closed a $4.4 million Series A, will enable Ai Palette to grow its business and partnerships in the United States and Latin America, according to Ai Palette co-founder and CEO Somsubhra GanChoudhuri.
- Companies in these regions such as Diageo, Cargill, and Hershey’s, are already using the platform to track consumer trends in markets such as US, Canada, Mexico and Colombia.
- Ai Palette also recently signed an exclusive partnership with Brazilian food and nutrition consultancy RGNutri, which will, in turn, give Ai Palette access to major Brazilian companies like Ambev (now part of Anheuser-Busch InBev), Bauducco, and BRF.
- Market intelligence veteran Chris Jensen will lead Ai Palette’s US-based business.
How Screen Winner works:
Ai Palette’s latest product Screen Winner lets CPGs automatically test multiple concepts within the same day, allowing companies to pinpoint the most original and relevant ideas for any given market.
- The tool scores each new concept’s originality and relevance against existing data and trends across different countries and categories.
- “Companies can put the concept through our screening system and are almost immediately able to see which are the concepts that will work for that category and market,” says GanChoudhuri. “Because the data is based on millions of data points, it is more robust and faster” than traditional screening methods.
- Along those lines, GanChoudhuri says the tool is “free of biases” since it doesn’t rely on consumer feedback or focus groups.
- Brands can take all of this information and use it to decide what their next product will be.
Why it matters:
Health-related food trends that grew out of the Covid-19 pandemic are still top-of-mind for many consumers, which leaves open a wide range of possibilities for companies that can address things like gut health, stress reduction, and immune system strengthening in their products.
By way of example, GanChoudhuri says functional health is “a huge trend” right now. “People need products that help them with stress relief; there are a lot of people looking for items that will help them sleep better, improve gut health, and even for categories for alcohol.” Ai Palette, he says, helps companies stay ahead of the curve on such trends and. in doing, so increases sales.
Consumer preferences are changing faster than ever,” US head Jensen said in a statement. “To thrive in this environment, food & beverage companies require agile solutions that provide real-time insights.”
