Unmanned Shelves Are Not Only Popular In China, But Also In Google Employees.

According to the world's clothing shoes and hat net,

Entrepreneurship is coming to the draught.

In China, unmanned shelves are now the "meat and potatoes" in the eyes of investors, and similar projects have been launched in the United States.

It is reported that Bodega, an unmanned shelf company founded by two former Google Corporation employees, is attracting more and more attention.

After 13 years as Google's product manager, Paul McDonald and his partner, and another senior Google employee, Ashwath Rajan, hopes to replace the past corner shop with an unmanned shelf.

Bodega deploys unmanned shelves in apartments, office buildings, school dormitories, gyms, and other areas, pushing five foot wide food cabinets filled with non perishable goods, which are often purchased by convenience stores.

Users can unlock the cabinets by matching their mobile phones. The camera equipped on the rack will record the merchandise taken by the users, then automatically deduct the credit card from the users, so the whole paction process needs no staff participation.

At present, the company has placed Bodega shelves in 50 areas on the west coast of the United States, and plans to quickly push shelves to all parts of the United States, with the goal of deploying more than 1000 by the end of 2018.

Bodega unmanned shelves have won the favor of investors.

According to TechCrunch of technology media, the current financing amount of the project has reached US $2 million 500 thousand.

The two founders obtained angel investment from executives of Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox and Google, and also obtained venture capital from First Round Capital Josh Kopelman, Forerunner Ventures Kirsten Kirsten and other institutions.

It is noteworthy that Bodega has used machine learning technology to continuously reassess 100 products with the highest demand in a region.

For example, in a female student union, young women may regularly buy pretzels, remover and tampons. In apartment buildings, residents may buy toilet paper, spaghetti and sweets regularly.

McDonald points out:

Each community usually has a similar preference. After all, they live or work in the same place.

We hope that by studying their shopping behavior, we can finally understand the difference between the needs of an apartment building and those of another apartment building.

On the provision of commodities, we can customize two adjacent dormitories.

In terms of cost control, Bodega generally does not have to pay for the space occupied by the shelves, because they will flaunt their contribution to the property manager.

For example, in the gym, Bodega emphasizes that placing a shelf with food and protein powder specially for athletes will make the gym more attractive to members. In the apartment building, the Bodega rack can make residents do not have to run to the local corner shop.

For future planning, McDonald hopes to establish partnerships with other retailers and deploy their store mini versions wherever needed.

For example, office supplies retailer Staples (Staples) can set up Bodega cabinets in the office, and health food brand GNC can set up unmanned shelves in the gym.

He said:

entity

Businessmen have been trying to keep pace with Amazon, but we think they have the opportunity to take different development routes.

They can bring products to people's places, so that they can be bought immediately when they need them.

This obviously outperforms the two day service of the electricity supplier.

China's unmanned shelves "venture capital boom"

Some investors have indicated to the media investment community that the new retail channel represented by the unmanned rack is undoubtedly the next big opportunity of the next 100 billion level.

In the face of such a large market scale, a large number of non shelf start-up companies began to "attack cities".

(unmanned shelves) threshold is not high enough, the market will soon enter a lot of players, difficult to defend.

From the point of view of shelf delivery, there is little difference between the practices, and the difference between commodities is not great.

According to public information statistics, since last half of last year, more than 10 unattended rack projects have received hundreds of millions of yuan financing, including more than 20 VC/PE entries, including:

In August last year, the small e micro shop received 140 million yuan A round of financing, and the investor was invested by Xingye and oasis capital.

Last October, the goad Hunter got tens of millions of dollars in angel financing.

In April and August this year, the leading frogs completed pre-A round and A round financing respectively, and the two rounds of financing amounted to tens of millions of yuan.

In August this year, Guo Xiaomei pre-A financing 30 million yuan, the investor is IDG capital, Ruifeng capital; in September, Guo Xiaomei A rounds of financing received tens of millions of dollars, investors are blue chip venture capital, IDG capital, Ruifeng capital;

In September this year, the star was able to invest 100 million yuan in angel rounds. Investors included China, Zhang Tao, Wang Xing and so on.

In September, the magic box CITYBOX A financing was awarded $15 million. Investors include Ji Yuan capital, real fund and so on.

In September, seven koalas received 50 million yuan A round of financing, and the investors were capital and Jingwei China.

In September, we got tens of millions of yuan in the A round, and the investors were the capital of Guiyang, venture capital and China.

VC, who had done research on unmanned shelves, held a "no good" attitude towards unmanned shelves.

He said to all weather technology that venture capitalists at this time are adding more unmanned shelves to catch the wind, rather than drop them.

More interesting reports, please pay attention.

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