Veesion - tackling shoplifting with AI
by Startacus Admin
Helping retailers to detect thefts in real time - Paris-based Veesion and its innovative AI-driven gesture recognition technology.
Massive, online retailers like Amazon aren’t the only threat to small, brick and mortar shops; theft is a more significant factor in a shop’s decline than people might think. In Europe alone, the loss caused by shoplifting adds up to €40 billion per year. Some small shops simply can’t afford to suffer too much loss before they can no longer stay open, and even franchise branches of bigger chains will be negatively affected, and even if they don’t end up closing, it may impact them enough that they have to let staff go. Sometimes simply having CCTV cameras will put off potential shoplifters, but what more can be done about those it does not?
Paris-based startup Veesion has a solution, and it relies on those very CCTV cameras that shoplifters think they can ignore. Veesion's SaaS platform uses AI capable of gesture recognition to determine suspicious behaviour, such as the somewhat iffy gesture of grabbing something off a shelf and putting it in your jacket pocket. The AI, which is always learning more about the behaviour it sees, will alert staff to what has happened so that they can intervene. The AI has watched thousands of hours of video in order to learn what it has so far, and it will continue to get more accurate over time, reducing false alerts and recognising more subtle signs of theft.
Since Veesion launched commercially in 2021, 800 businesses have adopted the platform in over 2,000 locations in more than 20 countries. Customers include the likes of Centra, Budgens, and 7-Eleven, and they report that it is helping to cut losses by around 60%, with one Nisa branch reporting a 90% reduction in shoplifting-related loss.
In October, Veesion announced that it had raised €10 million in funding in a Series A round participated in by Odyssée Venture, Verve Ventures, Swiss Immo Lab, Techmind, Aglaé Ventures, and Founders Future, as well as 20 other angels and partners of the startup. The funding will go towards furthering the capabilities of their platform and towards further R&D of additional features. The AI system has the potential for a much wider range of abilities, some of which are highly controversial and contested among those developing regulation, but for now, gesture recognition is the platform’s focus.
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Published on: 6th January 2023
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