All applications were analyzed by a prestigious jury represented by the top management of Barilla and Lavazza, executives from major Swiss and Italian retailers, as well as senior leaders from the Lifestyle Tech Competence Center member companies, including Accenture, UBS and Swiss Universities.

About 70 applications were submitted, and the selection was very tough. Twelve cutting-edge solutions were selected to pitch for the FoodTech Innovation Award 2023 at UBS in Lugano on September 28, 2023.

Category: Shoppable Marketing

Solutions that empower brands and retailers to intercept consumer behaviors, meet their needs and elevate their shopping experiences, resulting in higher marketing returns and increased conversions across multiple channels and diverse generations of shoppers. The finalists are:

AssetFloow https://www.assetfloow.com/

Location: Lisbon, PT

AssetFloow is an AI Behavioural platform for Retail and CPG that leverages Point of Sales data to get accurate metrics on customer journeys and behavior within stores. It allows retailers to get a deeper understanding about the shoppers’ journey and interactions with products in a physical store. No sensors, no cameras, and no devices are required.

Fanplayr  http://www.fanplayr.com/

Location: Wiswell, UK

Fanplayr is a customer engagement and personalization platform that helps businesses optimize online interactions and enhance customer experiences. It leverages advanced analytics, dynamic content customization, real-time insights, and AI-driven marketing tools to optimize marketing and e-commerce strategy.

FlavorWiki  http://business.flavorwiki.com/

Location: Zürich, CH

FlavorWiki is a digital insights company that combines data and machine learning to facilitate digital communication between food companies, retailers, and consumers. Through the use of research and technology, FlavorWiki aims to ensure better quality, healthier and sustainable products.

Footprints AI https://www.footprints-ai.com/

Location: Bucharest, RO

Footprints AI is a retail media software company that leverages AI technology to revolutionize how retailers monetize omnichannel customer data. Footprints AI understands, predicts, and influences the complete path to purchase of shoppers in the physical retail environment leveraging indoor positioning, predictive models, and omnichannel targeting. The result is that brands can target media audiences based on their predicted physical shopping behavior and different stages of their purchasing journey.

GUURU  https://www.guuru.com/

Location: Zürich, CH

GUURU offers a new community-led approach to convert online shoppers into confident buyers. GUURUs Expert Community Advice solution allows brands to involve real and loyal product users in delivering instant advice and authentic product recommendations.

Immerss  https://www.immerss.live/

Location: Dallas, US

Immerss is a live commerce platform enabling brands and retailers to engage with their customers in the most authentic way possible with both 1-to-1 digital clienteling and 1-to-Many live shopping tools. The result is a unified live commerce platform on the market that drives KPIs like conversion rates, AOVs and returns. The solution is applicable for different industries, from Luxury and fashion to specific product categories in Food Retail.

Knexus  http://www.knexus.co/

Location: London, UK

Knexus platform automatically transforms User Generated Content, influencer and brand owned assets into hyper personalized, shoppable content for e-commerce. Knexus automatically delivers the right content in front of the right shopper at the key moment to awaken inspiration and foster product discovery – creating confident buying decisions, driving revenue and conversions

MorphCast  http://www.morphcast.com/

Location: Florence, IT

MorphCast delivers client-side Facial Emotion AI solutions to improve digital experiences through a data-driven empathetic approach. This solution can be used to develop digital projects that interact with users in a more human and natural way, based on the detection of 130+ facial expressions.

Native AI http://www.gonative.ai/

Location: New York, US

Native AI is a market intelligence platform using generative AI to create “Digital Twins” or clones of your target clients to understand, test and create ideal experiences. By utilizing 3rd-party and 1st-party data, brands can ask Digital Twins specific questions about products, services, or competition and get unbiased answers back from millions of consumers in minutes.

Typeface  http://www.typeface.ai/

Location: Palo Alto, US

Typeface is the generative AI platform to supercharge personalized content creation for businesses. By uniting content velocity with brand personalization and control, any enterprise can create on-brand content faster and easier than ever before. Typeface raised $165 million from Salesforce Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Madrona, GV (Google Ventures), Menlo Ventures, and M12 (Microsoft’s Venture Fund).

Veris Behavior  https://verisbehavior.com/en/

Location: San Sebastian, ES

Veris Behavior is a tech startup creating Virtual Reality, Neuromarketing, and Data Science technology for immersive consumer studies. Veris Behavior simulates real-world shopping experiences in a virtual environment, enabling companies to analyze customer interactions to a range of marketing stimuli. It provides a platform for testing scenarios such as product launches, in-store promotions, packaging designs, pricing, and shelf optimization.

Wantent https://www.wantent.io/

Location: Kyiv, UA

Wantent is an AI-powered platform which tracks audience reactions and emotional states, estimates their attitude and engagement level into the content and provides recommendations to improve it. Wantent offers a new science-based approach to content testing, which complements traditional analytical approaches (e.g., focus groups, neuromarketing) with new advanced intellectual elements.

Contact information

Loomish SA & LTCC – Andrea Lentini, Senior Innovation Manager – andrea.lentini@loomish.ch

LTCC – Michele Crespi, Innovation Specialist – m.crespi@ti-switzerland-innovation.com

About Loomish SA

Loomish SA is a Swiss-based investment management firm specialized in Lifestyle-Tech, with a focus on Food, Fashion, Travel and Design industries. We are committed to accelerating value creation for all the players within the lifestyle ecosystem: investors, digital start-ups and established corporations looking for innovative solutions. Strategically located in Ticino, between the dynamic financial centre Zurich and the global lifestyle hub Milan, Loomish is perfectly positioned to link the best of both worlds. We deliver expert guidance and facilitate investments in the Lifestyle-Tech sector, focusing primarily on the disruptive technologies offered by European medium-sized start-ups and scale-ups. Find out more at LinkedIn @Loomish_SA and http://www.loomish.ch