Four major Russian retailers – Beeline, Hoff, M.Video-Eldorado Group and X5 Retail Group – are teaming up to launch the Retail Innovation Tech Alliance (RITA), a startup scouting initiative in Russia and abroad.
RITA will be seeking innovative solutions in a variety of fields, including e-commerce, transport and logistics, consumer experience, quality of goods, point-of-sale operations, back office automation, marketing, digital entertainment, Internet-of-Things and others.
The retail companies expect such technologies to “make their business and decision-making processes more efficient, improve customer experience and create promising new business models and opportunities.”
RITA’s scouting activities in Russia will be coordinated by a yet-to-be appointed local operator, while international operations will be supported by Paris-based Lafayette Plug & Play, covering Western Europe, and Axis in Israel.
Lafayette Plug & Play will also take some of the startups selected by RITA to its acceleration programs in Paris.
However, the partnerships with Axis and Lafayette Plug & Play are not exclusive. RITA will consider tech solutions from other sources, be it Europe or Israel this year or the USA and Asia at a further stage, RITA representatives told EWDN.
Under plans, five deal flow sessions will be set up this year: two of them from Russia, two from Europe and one from Israel.
RITA partners also intend to share their best practices and use-cases involving startups. “We’ll conduct joint analysis of various technologies and their applications,” Vladimir Salakhutdinov, Head of Strategy at X5 Retail Group, told East-West Digital News.
Israeli freshness sensors for Russian retail giant
An LSE-listed group operating in Russia, Х5 was among the first local retailers to launch open innovation programs, back in 2017.
“For the past three years we’ve touched base with over 1,100 startups, reviewing and evaluating more than 550 tech solutions. Of those, more than 130 startups entered the pilot phase with 19 projects rolled out as a result of this work,” Salakhutdinov told EWDN.
activities were presented at Open Innovations,
a major industry event in Moscow
According to him, around 15% of these pilot projects reach the implementation stage and deliver results.
X5 has developed startup scouting programs in Russia and neighboring countries, including the Baltics, as well as in Israel, Singapore, China and Spain. The group’s first partnership with Lafayette Plug & Play was inked in late 2019.
As examples of startup partnerships, Salakhutdinov cites four Israeli companies: Anagog (consumer behavior analysis), Evigence (sensors for freshness management), Varcode (cold chain management) and Tarritech (shelf life of food products).
A leader in consumer electronics, M.Video-Eldorado Group also has a strong background in chasing startups. “We cooperate with a variety of Russian accelerators and funds, and organize our own hackathons and meetups,” Fedor Savelyev, Head of Strategy, told EWDN.
“Currently we work with about 20 startups in different areas, such as biometric check-in for retail staff and augmented reality. Having gained an in-depth knowledge of the domestic startup market, we now want to source new ideas from abroad,” he added.
