Drill, an Israel neuromarketing startup, has launched a Series A funding round in an effort to penetrate the US market.
Founded by Lanor Daniel and Sivan Friedman-Yosef, Drill has developed a system to help businesses monitor real-time responses of customers and receive insights that can influence sales. This is done by tracking eyes, facial expressions and other indicators of emotions.
“In online sales, it is very easy to analyze user behavior, but in the offline market, the process is much more complex,” Daniel said. “This makes it difficult to analyze a buyer’s decision tree at a physical point of sale, as reflected from the experiences of many companies that have in the past attempted to confront this problem.”
Daniel said that Drill utilized AI technology and computer vision that succeeds in picking up ways to improve the purchasing experience and increase offline sales by dozens of percentage points.
Drill’s team includes retailers, technology and algorithm experts, behavioral scientists, psychologists, marketing experts, strategists, and more.
The technology uses deep learning and 3D classification imagery to identify human behavior against a store shelf in real-time, Friedman-Yosef said, adding that the models communicate and synchronize with each other via microservices.
Early investors in the company include Mobileye’s founder Amnon Shashua, Eyal Ravid, owner of the “Victory” supermarket chain, and Leiman Schlussel, one of the country’s largest food importers.
“Just like e-commerce store owners, who do not move without Google Analytics, physical store owners will not want to move without Drill,” Ravid said.
“I came to Drill to use the technology for my Victory supermarkets. I was so impressed by the product that I decided I wanted to be part of their success, and at the same time decided to invest in the company.”