Investing in Tiliter

May 2

The following excerpt is from Allied’s original deal memo to investors. To review investment opportunities in full, please consider joining the syndicate at Allied.vc/join

I first invested in Tiliter last year as part of their Series A after visiting the company’s head office and meeting the incredible team. At the time, Tiliter was one of the fastest-growing startups in Australia, with over 100 computer vision systems deployed across 42 stores nationwide.

The primary use of funds was to help the company launch their proprietary plug-and-play computer vision and AI platform while expanding into the North American market.

Over the past 10-months, I’m excited to share that Tiliter has continued to dominate the retail market, having recently won numerous highly-competitive multi-year contracts.

Furthermore, Tiliter has expanded internationally with offices in Sydney, Munich and New York, and their software is now live in 9 countries, including the United States and across Europe. As such, I’m very excited to have been invited to share this exclusive investment opportunity with Allied members.

Enter Tiliter

Tiliter is the world’s #1 smart scale with one of the most flexible and accurate identification systems ever developed. The company uses proprietary computer vision and AI technology to automatically recognize products without barcodes.

The first vertical they are targeting is the $12T global food & grocery retail market.

Let’s face it, going to the supermarket sucks (especially during a pandemic). Long lines, no social distancing, and much of the fresh produce is wrapped in plastic. Think about weighing your loose vegetables, fruit, etc., and having to search through the directory of items at checkout––it’s time-consuming and arduous.

Furthermore, checkout technology hasn’t changed much over the last 20 years, and retailers have been desperately looking for ways to improve productivity while offering customers a better way to shop. Here are just a few of the many pain points faced by consumers and retailers:

1) Wasted time

Consumers waste billions of hours in line at supermarkets each year, costing retailers more than $37B in potential sales due to long lines (e.g. if a retailer can scan just one more item per minute across all checkouts, they’ll earn an extra $3M in revenue per year).
Tiliter reduces wait time by over 40% with their proprietary computer vision technology.

2) Poor user experience

Identification of non-bar coded items make-up over 15% of overall purchases in supermarkets, yet 57% of people still have trouble scanning items that won’t register.

3) Theft and shrinkage

Shrinkage and theft cost retailers more than $46B per year (i.e. customers claiming avocados as brown onions at the self-checkout).
Self-checkout theft accounts for 4% of inventory, while fresh produce accounts for 67% of stolen items.
Supermarkets face a significant loss of profit due to time-consuming processes and theft.

4) Plastic waste and environmental impact

800k tons of waste is created each year from wrapping produce in plastic. Increasingly, customers are pushing companies and brands to reduce their use of plastic, and an increasing number of countries are banning plastic usage in grocery stores.

Tiliter solves these problems with their proprietary camera and software system that automatically identifies fruit, vegetables, and other non-barcoded items.

Using the latest deep learning and AI, Tiliter pre-selects the items and removes the need for manual entry, with over 99% accuracy, all in under 1-second.

Tiliter has built the latest in AI technology that every supermarket can adopt today, not in 10 years. It does not require an internet connection and runs on low-cost hardware, making adoption easy for supermarkets with little or no changes to their existing IT infrastructure.

Here’s how it works:

Place any produce item on the scale (bagged or unbagged)
The item is instantly identified in less than 1 second (no touchscreen required)
Checkout using your smartphone or at the regular cashier when you leave—

Watch this quick YouTube video to see Tiliter in action.

Tiliter’s products drastically improve performance and receive rave reviews from shoppers and businesses alike. Depending on where you live, you can go use the technology in the real world right now. Tiliter’s vision is to be the go-to global brand for AI-based visual recognition in retail.

Given the industry’s slow innovation & adoption cycles of 8-10 years, Tiliter has built a highly durable and defensible business model. As such, we love Tiliter’s land-and-expand strategy and couldn’t be more excited to support the company as they continue their global expansion.

Why we are thrilled to support the team at Tiliter

Tiliter has demonstrated near flawless execution of the vision that was clearly articulated by the founders since their Seed Round in 2019, and we love it when startups do what they say they are going to do.

The company is now at an inflection point, entering a powerful new phase of growth, preparing to expand its software that is already live in 9 countries. We believe Tiliter has built an innovative and scalable technology that can become the market leader across multiple verticals.

1) Strong early signs of traction

Tiliter already holds very large contracts with Woolworths, coupled with an impressive pipeline of upcoming pilots at numerous global retail chains.