How robotics can transform retail: Akash Gupta | GreyOrange posted on the topic | LinkedIn (2025)

Transcript

As for state of robotics in the retail industry is still pretty nascent. We're still in early days for robotics. Of course, if you think about retail, we're talking about 3 sections of retails here. First is of course, the throne of robotics and distribution centers, you know, in terms of automating the movement of goods between distribution centers to retail stores itself. And I think that's something that's becoming more and more efficient with robotics. Second part where we have seen more and more I would say adoption of robotics and retailers back up the house or back of the store automation for large stores, you know kind of helping to optimize different things in the back of the house. And the third aspect where we have seen robotics and start playing some part is basically in doing kind of inventory data capture within the retail store where multiple robotic technologies are either imaging based or RFID. Means where robots are able to walk through the store and kind of do the data capture for inventory accuracy. One of the major questions that we get asked or look at pretty much with every retailer is that how do we basically start bringing retail and ecommerce altogether is only channel. You know so many different ways of how we are thinking about retail and ecommerce and the customer finally is thinking about this all as just one thing. They're all thinking in one single way and I think robotics can definitely be a. Accelerant for retailers to bring retail and ecommerce to one single Omni channel. You know kind of converting your distribution centers into Omni channel centers using robotic technologies and similarly kind of being able to do a fair bit of pick, pack, ship using for example pick assist robots within large stores. When you look at the retail industry, people are trying to kind of execute or implement robotics for getting certain outcomes right, you know making sure for example your stores are fulfilled always. In real time and likes of that, there's still a lot of gap between just implementing robots rather than getting real kind of value out of the robot. People are really understanding today that there's a difference between robotic uptimes or real kind of outcomes that they matter. And I think as people are going from the pilot stage to real scale up stage, they are understanding how to kind of create real value out of robotics, you know, on the back of this whole kind of technology. Revolution that is happening with robotics, it's also now becoming easier to connect these nodes altogether, right, where information exchange between 2 retail store and our distribution center can happen in real time, right. Also basically only channel execution within the stores can happen in more real time and likes of that. So I think a real time connected network of any inventory nodes is going to give up much better yield out of inventory or gross margins out of your inventory rather than just. You know, I would say separate channels. So Grey Orange basically provides a software platform that kind of helps retailers in different inventory notes. You know one part of our solution is basically Gray Matter which is our software orchestration within the four walls of warehouses and helps orchestrate robots. People are OT technologies and likes of that focusing on getting fulfillment outcomes out of different kind of robotic technologies. It's hardware acoustics. So we are not kind of sticking to one single robotic technologies. They matter basically is connected to 10s of robotic technologies and you can basically kind of operate different kind of automation solutions using Gray matter. So that is one part of it you know today is widely deployed across multiple fulfillment centers only channel, you know centers and likes of that. Second part of the solution are retail store platform called G Store which is all about basically execution and customer experience within the four walls of stores you know and and as we all know most of the retailers. Have far more inventory in retail stores than warehouses. And in this so many channel world, there's a lot of value when looking at all of this inventory in one single view and being able to kind of provide that in real time to their customers. So She's store basically helps pretty much get the customer experience right in the stores, but also converts that store into your microfilament centers where you can do same day, next day deliveries and in a very efficient way. So these are two platforms. The third part of our portfolio is what. They call us Certified Ranger Network. This is basically a group of robotic and sensing technologies that are either built by us but also built by a lot of third party technologies that we certify on our platform with reliability and safety impacts of that. So at the end of the day, we provide a complete end to end solution to our customers whether it can be Gray matter on one or many robotic technologies or G Store and one or many sensing technologies or even today we are doing complete networks. Where all the main houses are running on Gray matter, all the stores are running on cheese store interacting with each other in real time and giving like A1 single inventory execution system for retailers and only channel world. So that's a little bit about challenge. So I think from the retail stores perspective say die in need of retail stores transforming into the new version of Omni channel kind of retail stores where you know managed in a very, very different way and you know should be live visible to you know customers so today if you really want. Customers to visit the retail stores, you got to create a differentiated experience, right, Else it's as good as ecommerce. So you know customers being able to view what is live inventory, being able to come in and kind of get more personalized experience, get more digitized experience within the retail stores And to the point where they should be able to request things from the fitting room, they should be able to, I would say get a styling recommendations and likes of that. And also how do you free up the time of your store associates from doing all the back end jobs? But to kind of come in and really interact with the customer because today when you walk in the retail store, you know it's almost impossible to find a person and get recommendation or even ask things. So I think there is definitely you know a need where retail stores really need to kind of start becoming experienced Centers for the customers rather than anything else. And that would bring only channel view live. You know for retailers, you know today when I visit some of the retail stores and talk to store associates they are using five or six different. Applications, it really kind of make things a lot more inefficient and likes of that because people were running stores and then they use click and collect or pick up in the store and introduce like a completely different app for that. And so kind of people are really getting confused in terms of going from one app to another app. So I think there is definitely a strong need of lot more vertical integration in the software stack where one single platform can kind of start journey from you know distribution centers to fulfillment centers to retail stores. He returns and back. So I think we'll see a lot more vertically integrated software stacks coming in the next few years.