Startup Caper attracts investors with a project of "future baskets" for simple and convenient shopping in supermarkets.
It's about building a cart that will use computer vision and a variety of sensors to scan items on the go.
Caper has announced the closing of a new $10 million investment round involving Lux Capital and a number of Silicon Valley venture capital funds. To date, the startup has already raised $13 million. The company hopes that new technologies will allow traditional grocery retailers to keep pace with Amazon, which has effectively doubled automation in retail with the launch of the Amazon Go stores.
Unlike Amazon Go, which uses a complex system of sensors and cameras throughout the store, Caper's solution focuses solely on what happens inside the shopping cart. The exact cost of the "smart" basket is not reported, but it is known that we are talking about "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to equip one store. For comparison, about $ 1 million was invested in the equipment of the first store of the future Amazon.
“Instead of keeping track of the entire store, we are focusing on this very small cart. Our calculations are faster, our cameras are much closer, and we can scale the project much faster because we don't have to implement any infrastructure inside the store,” commented Caper CTO and co-founder York Young.
The "cart of the future" is expected to contain a bank card reader, a barcode scanner and image recognition cameras for quick self-purchase of goods in a store. The Smart Cart's touch screen will display personalized recommendations as well as shopping lists and recipes based on purchases made.
According to Yang, the company's core vision for product innovation is to create "a platform level in retail that has never been seen before."
