Veea Inc., a New York-based leader in integrated smart edge connectivity, computing and security technologies, and iFree Group, a Hong-Kong based conglomerate providing global connectivity, Smart City, Smart Retail and Smart Hospitality solutions, announced that they will demonstrate their latest product, TROLLEE, at NRF 2022: Retail’s Big Show, a global customer and partner event being held in New York on January 16th through January 18th.
At this year’s NRF event, Veea’s TROLLEE smart shopping cart experience with AdEdge advertising solution will be highlighted at the Qualcomm Technologies retail booth experience at NRF. Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. is bringing to life the future of retail by showcasing next-generation shopping experiences with the latest ecosystem design wins. Qualcomm Technologies will host 12 digitized retail demonstrations, highlighting over 16 global ecosystem partners.
Veea, in collaboration with iFREE Group, created the Smart Retail application, TROLLEE smart shopping cart. TROLLEE smart shopping cart, as supported on Veea’s VeeaHub platform, is one of the several smart vertical solutions coming to market resulting from this collaboration.
The TROLLEE smart shopping cart experience, enabled by Qualcomm® APQ8053 and Qualcomm® IPQ7153 IoT solutions, is a highly advanced smart shopping cart platform, developed by iFREE Group, that offers one of the most advanced smart retail solutions, leveraging hybrid edge-cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), indoor positioning systems, contextual digital advertising and other technologies powered by Veea’s VeeaHub platform that will revolutionize big box and supermarket retail by bridging the online-to-offline (O2O) customer journey and experiences. TROLLEE represents another example of Smart City applications that further benefits from VeeaHub platform’s AdEdge advertising solution. The AdEdge application that runs on VeeaHub’s Linux server delivers the content to TROLLEE’s display.
Veea’s AdEdge is a full-featured end-to-end advertising platform offering both cloud-based and local management of the in-store advertisements.
Its contextual digital advertising solution is a highly sophisticated advertising platform that intelligently and proximally micro-targets shoppers, or visitors at any venue, in the real world with interactive and immersive advertising from a global network of advertisers. It processes real-time data from multiple sources to provide holistic insights and deeper intelligence about ad performance, viewer attentiveness, demographics and shoppers’ preferences. Retailers can for the first time set a full range of advertising campaign goals and constraints that are delivered locally through VeeaHub platform’s Content Delivery Network (CDN) with the ability to cache the ad content for targeted, personalized advertising supported by its highly accurate indoor positioning solution.
VeeaHub powers the TROLLEE platform for delivery of ads and promotions in real-time, linked to location beacons in-store, so retailers and brands can engage customers at the perfect moment to influence their buying decisions. It leverages its on-board AI and activity monitoring data collection software to carry out simple automated decisions that enhance customers’ overall retail experience and satisfaction, thus improving customer loyalty and profitability. The solution is ideal for supermarkets and “big box” retailers.
The platform may optionally be integrated with the retailer’s loyalty program and/or POS to tie together all the above with customer purchase history to deliver the most satisfying shopping experience while substantially increasing the value of the in-store advertising by reporting the ad conversions. TROLLEE trials now underway in Southeast Asia, China, and Japan are garnering positive feedback from major retailers. One of the region’s largest supermarket chains has been collaborating closely in the development of TROLLEE.
VeeaHub
VeeaHub’s highly integrated platform provides enterprise-grade Wi-Fi 6, IoT and cellular connectivity solutions, including 4G and 5G SD-WAN services, as either a primary or a failover WAN connection, with a Cloud-based full security stack for TROLLEE and other applications within the store. It incorporates IoT connectivity including Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Classic, Zigbee and LoRaWAN. VeeaHub nodes installed on the local network instantaneously create a self-organizing Connectivity Mesh, called vMesh, that simultaneously provides for a Computing Mesh, a microservice-based Service Mesh, an Application Mesh and an Edge Intelligence Mesh that also supports a highly accurate indoor positioning solution.
Retailers can optionally implement other VeeaHub AdEdge-supported solutions such as smart digital signage, Augmented Reality (AR) throughout the store further supported by an SDK for the retailer’s smartphone or smart glasses, smart unattended “store within the store”, and several others alongside TROLLEE or just independently. TROLLEE and VeeaHub platform’s combined AdEdge digital advertising solution rewrite the rules of digital marketing. Retailers will benefit from increased sales and a new source of highly-coveted advertising revenue. The companies are now making the solution available for Proof-of-Concept trials with major retailers globally.
Advertising content, special offers and/or coupons for products in the store are cached on VeeaHub units and are delivered instantaneously when a shopper is in proximity of the advertised products for unparalleled shopping experiences. Real-time downloading of this content from the Cloud wouldn’t result in satisfactory user experiences due to latency and lack of tight integration with indoor positioning systems.
Shoppers can find what they need more efficiently while checkout is streamlined, reducing staffing requirements. Based on shoppers’ journeys through the store, retailer’s planograms can be highly optimized for most shoppers through machine learning and AI. Customers will use this virtual, personal shopping device as a concierge to seek recommendations, discounts, and product reviews to make their in-store experiences unique, memorable, immersive, fun, and, most importantly – easy.
“Retailers win when they consistently deliver exciting experiences to customers, while driving sales of products in their physical stores, supporting brands in disruptive new ways,” said Allen Salmasi, Founder and CEO, Veea, Inc. “We are delighted to be part of Qualcomm Technologies retail technology ecosystem and to demonstrate our Trollee smart shopping cart and AdEdge solutions at the NRF event. After launching these collaborative retail innovations at last year’s Qualcomm Smart Cities Accelerate event, together and other retail ecosystem members we are rolling out extraordinary shopping at the intelligent edge with entertaining, engaging digital services that make the shopper’s journey better, while generating valuable data and insights to retailers and brands.”
An introductory video of the TROLLEE Smart Retail Solution is available here.
