INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Standard Cognition needs just 27 to go after the $27 trillion market of equipping regular shops with autonomous retail technology.Walk into
Open up its iOS or Android app and a special light pattern flashes, allowing the cameras to tie you to your account and payment method
Grab whatever you want, and just walk out
Standard Cognition will bill you
It even works without an app
Shop like normal and then walk up to a kiosk screen, the cameras tell it what items you nabbed and you can pay with cash or credit card
Just a year old, Standard Cognition already has 40 employees, but plans to hire 70 to 80 more over the next six months so it can speed up
deployment to more partners
pre-money.Instead of some lofty tech solution that requires a whole new store to be built around it, Standard Cognition gets retailers to
pay for the capital expenditures to install its low number of ceiling cameras and a computer to run them
to become concierges who make sure customers find the perfect products
The crew came together while all working at the SEC
and narrowed it down to autonomous checkout
Retailers would be desperate for assistance to fight off Amazon
So the squad quit their jobs and started Standard Cognition.In September, Standard Cognition opened a 1,900-sq-ft flagship test store on
in San Francisco, besting Amazon to the punch
Customers can stuff items in their bags, reconsider and put some back, and stroll out of the store with no stop at the cashier
Standard Cognition claims its camera system is 99 percent accurate, and is trained to identify the suspicious movements and behavior of
shoplifters.The store is part of a sudden wave of autonomous retail startups, including Zippen, which opened the first one in SF; fellow Y
Combinator startup Inokyo that launched a bare-bones pop-up in Mountain View; and Trigo Vision, which is partnering with an Israeli grocery
chain for more than 200 stores.Now with plenty of capital and eager customers, Standard Cognition is equipping stores for its first four
Three refuse to be named, but include United States grocery, drug store and convenience store businesses
Standard Cognition is already working on its store mapping for its cameras and will begin camera installation next month, though it will be
a little while until it opens.Japan is the perfect market for Standard Cognition because their aging population has produced a labor
Autonomous checkout could keep Japanese retailers growing
And because 70 percent of transactions in Japan are cash-based, it also forced the startup to learn how to handle payments outside of its
That could make Standard Cognition appealing for retailers that want to embrace the future without abandoning the past.Getting long-running
more fulfilling roles as concierges.
