We had the great opportunity to talk with Roei Raz, Sales VP at Onebeat, a retail tech startup.
What is Onebeat?
Onebeat is an Israeli retail technology startup with operations in Mexico that gives his service to well-known brands and retailers in 24 countries. Onebeat’s solutions combine artificial intelligence and big data tools to understand consumer behavior and buying patterns.
“We combine IA technology with big data tools to identify and understand consumption and costumer behavior very fast. We have an unique advantage in this industry, the ability to identifiy very fast and give this information very early in the season”, Roei explains.
With his technology Onebeat is helping retailers increase their sales conversions at record speed while significantly reducing inventory investment.
In Mexico Onebeat works with great companies that sell electronics, jewelry, glasses, furniture, footwear, clothing, etc. Mexico is a key country for Onebeat for its business development, that’s why they’re betting its 5 million Series A investment round, led by Surround Ventures and AnD Ventures, to grow its business in Mexico by 200%.
“Onebeat is investing in countries like Mexico because we see in Mexico a very powerful opportunity for retailers to grow and scale up, this is very beneficial for retailers but at the same time it comes with the big challenge of different geographies”, Roie says.
Retail technology
Most of the retail tech startups are problem solvers, they’re companies that solve the problems of retailers. Onebeat deals with the main problem of retail, which is understanding costumer behavior and execute a plan according to it.
Onebeat offers a robust and innovative platform for continuous operational improvement. The planning-execution cycle requires an in-depth analysis of historical data and understand reality as it unfolds to make the adjustments required by the plan.
“With this investment we want to take it to the next level and increase our exposure, and reach the potential retailers we can get with Onebeat”.
Roei Raz, Sales VP at Onebeat.
“What we have seen the last years with the pandemic it’s that this is a topic that gets more and more attention with retail. We have to put together features from various areas of retail, we put those to be able to provide retailers with a very shorter prediction mechanism, so the decisions are taken really fast”.
That’s what makes Onebeat different from its competition.
“Onebeat has an unique expertise across different segments in the retail industry, like fashion, speciality retail, consumer electronics, pharmacy, and auto parts industry, basically any retail industry that isn’t food,”, Roie told me.
With their investment Onebeat wants to increase awereness in the market about their technology.
“Onebeat is the solution. Our exposure is limited, so with this investment we want to take it to the next level and reach the potential retailers Onebeat can get”.
Lessons from the pandemic
Roie thinks that the pandemic gave very important lessons to the pandemic industry. Traditional retailers used to put a lot of focus on how to plan better, there was a lot of investing on just planning, now with the pandemic that traditional focus doesn’t work.
“Consumer sentiment it’s something which is changing week over week, it’s a weekly exercise today, the transition to online channels it’s also something quite fast, putting the traditional retails in disadvantage with the most professional ecommerce. Retail needs to develop the capability to react fast, without exclusion. That’s why they need to adopt tools like OneBeat”, Roei states.
Talking about the challenges brought by the pandemic Roei said that these challenges should be seen as opportunities.
“The last two years were a rollercoaster, when Covid just started nobody knew what to expect (…) we have clients in markets like Latin America, India, Eastern Europe, and all this areas were going to lockdown very early during the pandemic and it was very challenging. At the same time I must say this challenge turned out to be a big opportunity, because the retailers learned very quickly that an optimatization tool it’s not a privilege, it’s a necessity”.
What comes next
Roei considers that the new callenges came with a lot of learning for both sides.
“Everyone learned to work online, and eventually 2021 was a record year for us, we scaled up even faster”, Roei remembered.
“It looks like was 2021 was the comeback year for retail, the moment is still on”.
Roei Raz, Sales VP at Onebeat
One thing the pandemic has changed in the industry, specially to industries in Mexico, it’s that the consumers learned how to buy online.
“Mexico has a retail industry which is traditional and usually had low sales online, the pandemic changed that. Now online sales are higher than before the pandemic, I think that’s really beneficial to everyone, to the consumers, to the retailers, and optimization tools like Onebeat because the retailers require optimatization”, Roei affirms.
Onebeat it’s going to be the solution for these retailers.
For our readers
To conclude Roei leaves the next message to our readers at PRONetwork.
“Loking into the pandemic and what has happened to the last two years we need to look at the opportunities, eventually there’s a freedom of choice in everything, we could look things as a challenge or as an opportunity, today there are many technologies available, we can adopt digitization across many areas, eventually there’s a limited capacity to adopt digitization as a technology, we need to decide where to put the tech, I think we should put the tech on things that gave us maximum value, and that at the end better serves the costumer”.
If you’re interested in Onebeat, click here.
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