Lenta and GenerationS selected retail startups to launch pilot projects
GenerationS and Lenta, the largest hypermarket chain in Russia, summed up the results of international startups selection in the retail sector. The best projects will conduct pilots using company's infrastructure, receive business expertise on product localization in the Russian market, and will get an opportunity of long-term cooperation with Lenta.
At the pitch session, 15 international teams presented to Lenta management their innovative solutions in the field of automation and improving the efficiency of operations, marketing, logistics and supply chain, as well as new services for customers.
As a result, seven promising projects were selected by an expert jury for a detailed assessment. Lenta team will further discuss potential cooperation with them. If business cases prove that initiatives have value, startups will get the opportunity to conduct paid pilots and further long-term cooperation with the company.
Selected projects include a store navigation solution, an app for shoppers with personalized prices and mobile payment, an innovative material for a cooling system in online delivery, a technology to extend the freshness of products, innovative packaging, a robot for positioning products, and others.
Vladimir Sorokin, CEO of Lenta: “Comprehensive search for international startup projects is a new experience for our company. We hope that the selected teams will prove the stated hypotheses during the pilot stage and will be able to increase the efficiency of our company's processes. We are ready to provide methodological support to the teams and help in their adaptation to the Russian market. In the future, we will continue to search for solutions across foreign markets."
Ekaterina Petrova, managing director of GenerationS: “The success of any accelerator is measured by the number of pilot projects implemented by the company. We are guided by this rule when looking for innovative solutions for our partners. Sometimes it is not so easy to find the “right” project that would be suitable in all aspects, but thanks to the developed foreign innovation ecosystem and the pool of our partners, we were able to collect interesting international projects in a short time and present them to Lenta experts. The pitch session identified startups that will continue their journey with the company directly into the pilot stage. We believe that the tests will be successful, and international teams will be able to get a reliable partner such as Lenta, one of the largest retailers in Russia, and Lenta will be able to increase its competitive advantages in the market."
In total, within the framework of the first international selection of projects for Lenta, more than 270 applications were collected, where 65% of teams were from Europe, 18% from Israel, 10% from Asia and 7% from the USA.
