Turning up the heat on fast-moving consumer goods market research, Algori raises €3.3 million

Madrid-based martech startup Algori has raised €3.3 million in a seed round. Offering fast-moving consumer goods companies ultra granular data, the investment will be used to further develop the startups’ data science tech as it scales business in Spain and eyes additional Western European market entries.

Algori’s €3.3 million seed funding round was co-led by Lisbon’s Shilling Capital and Tallinn’s Change Ventures with Flashpoint VC also participating in the round. As one might expect, the round also saw the participation of several angel investors, most notably former Numerator Board Member and Infoscout CEO Jared Schrieber, who led Numerator to a $1.5 billion exit to Kantar, the Goliath to Algori’s David.

According to McKinsey, consumer goods companies are 3.5 times more likely to use granular data to propel success. No big secrets here, however, the current state of data offered by industry players is lacking in granularity and speed. 

Point-of-Sale (POS) data providers exclude outlets such as Lidl and Aldi (small prices, but big market share) and therefore lack a holistic view of the retail market. In addition, they cannot report retailer-specific sales figures, producing aggregates only. 

Rolling back to the “traditional” way of gathering market data, consumer panels lack adequate sample sizes to provide ultra-specific, accurate data on individual products. For instance, Kantar’s consumer panel claims 12,000 households across Spain, meant to provide an accurate measurement of a population of approximately 47 million.

This is where Algori enters the fray.

Leveraging data science, machine learning, and its own consumer app, which rewards money to users in exchange for providing their shopping data, Algori amasses approximately 50,000 weekly shoppers, allowing it to capture 1 in 400 grocery receipts in Spain. 

According to the company, on average, it takes 12 seconds for Algori’s app users to submit a receipt and register their full shopping basket data, a figure significantly faster than the 8 minutes needed when using conventional household panel barcode scanners. 

The company then identifies the shopping basket items on a product level without the need for any retailer sales system integrations. The basket data is further enriched with shopper demographics, psychographics, past purchase history, store locations, and other valuable data points. The entire process happens in near real-time, ultimately providing customers with the ability to shift gears much more rapidly when trends begin to emerge.

“FMCG brands, retailers as well as media agencies have reported to us that a lack of high-quality data is holding them back from making the right insight-driven decisions. These companies need data that is much more granular and fresh,” explained Algori CEO and co-founder Andrius Juozapaitis. “Unfortunately, the consumer goods market research oligopoly has deterred the innovation required to get there. We are leveraging technology in a new way, rethinking the entire process to push the boundaries of FMCG data insights and significantly accelerate the data-driven decision making capabilities in the sector. Our ultimate goal is to help consumer goods companies get more distribution, more sales and execute their marketing strategies better.”