Fountain9, an innovative AI-led startup in the predictive inventory planning space, founded by two ex-Googlers has raised $1.9M in seed funding. Prominent investors include Binny Bansal backed 021 Capital, Y Combinator, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal backed Titan Capital, US-based new-age VC firm Globevestor, Harvard Seed Fund and climate change mission driven German investment firm Blue Impact Ventures. Marquee Angel Investors – Ex YC partners – Holly Liu, Tracy Young and Carnegie Mellon Alumni were also part of the round.
In today’s business scenario, most food & beverages companies (F&B) are looking to grow rapidly and ensure they are reducing their environmental impact. Fountain9 focuses on helping such F&B businesses transform their inventory operations in a smarter manner with their flagship product Kronoscope. Kronoscope is an AI-powered inventory optimization solution that continuously analyses changes in demand patterns to enable their customers to sell more and waste less.
The company is currently focusing on brands in the F&B, e-commerce and retail space in India. The funding will be used to enhance the intelligence of their demand sensing engine, strengthen its product offerings and expand into global markets.
Speaking about this, Niki Khokale, Co-Founder and CEO, Fountain9, said, “Globally, about $260 billion worth of food gets wasted because inventory decisions worth millions of dollars are still made using spreadsheets and heuristics. Inventory planning in the food space comes at an environmental cost and such wastage can be prevented with better prediction of future demand. Kronoscope’s state of the art demand sensing is capable of predicting short and long-term demands with great precision to ensure businesses generate maximum ROI with minimum stock wastage.”
Innovation is at the heart of Fountain9’s approach to solve the global issue of food wastage. While the sophisticated algorithms ensure that optimal results are achieved by the organizations, equal emphasis is put on ease of use to ensure better user adoption. The company’s customer first approach has resulted in 5X growth in ARR since the time they launched Kronoscope toward the end of last year.
“We are excited with the vision of Fountain9 and their execution abilities to create truly agile supply chains in the CPG space. Our partnership will support them to further innovate, expand to global markets, and create superior solutions that enable accurate decision-making and reduce environmental impact,” said Sailesh Tulshan, Founder, 021 Capital
The pandemic has brought immense shifts in supply chains. Uncertainties on the demand and supply side have made traditional planning processes obsolete. The company has been helping their F&B clients respond faster to changing consumer needs and keep their inventory costs under control.
Dr. Rakesh Sinha, ex-Global Supply Chain Head at Godrej CP and a close advisor to Fountain9, said, “Most companies face stock out losses because they follow rigid inventory planning processes and that hampers their ability to adapt quickly to changes on demand or supply side. This is where Fountain9’s solution Kronoscope brings a very unique combination of best in class demand sensing and inventory planning using fundamentals of TOC principles to enable their customers to be more agile, plan frequently and adapt quickly”.
The dynamic business environment has made manual methods to create demand predictions and replenishments plans completely redundant. Fountain9 is a preferred solution partner for leading F&B and Retail organizations who are looking for end-to-end automation solutions to achieve accurate and agile demand and inventory planning.
