Dev.ua spoke with Lina Sivura, CMO of the startup Pricer24, which supports Ukrainian and European companies track competitors’ prices and create strategic decisions based on data. The platform already works with Rozetka, Comfy, Epicenter, and Philips, and the team is planning to enter new markets in Europe.
Lina Sivura, CMO of Ukrainian startup Pricer24, notified Dev.ua about the company’s product. Pricer24 is a market analytics platform that allows brands, distributors, and retail chains to monitor prices and availability of products from competitors in real time. This supports them respond quicker to market modifys and create decisions based on current data. According to Sivura, the main goal of Pricer24 is to support managers save time and effort by providing all the necessary market information in a convenient form.
The Pricer24 startup emerged as a response to the lack of quality analytics tools in retail. The team saw this as a kind of «pain point»: managers spent hours manually collecting data on prices and competitors’ shares. As Lina Sivura explains, it was in this context that the idea was born to automate the process and take market analytics to a new level.
«We don’t just reveal data, we provide ready-created conclusions for business,» she adds. It is this focus on practical value that sets Pricer24 apart from most existing solutions.
History of the company’s creation
The idea for Pricer24 originated a few years ago in Ukraine. The founders of the project from Dnipro noticed that the market lacked tools for automatic price analysis. Initially, the system was created by a compact team of enthusiasts, and almost no one knew about the project. However, as Sivura recalls, everything modifyd after the first pilot launches: customers immediately saw the benefits of automation.
«At first, few people knew about us. But once the first applyrs saw the result, we started to scale quickly.»
This confirmed the promising nature of the Pricer24 idea and gave impetus to the development of the product.
How Pricer24 works and what benefits does it provide?
The Pricer24 platform collects data on prices, assortment and promotions from online stores and websites of retail chains. Then this data is processed utilizing analytics and machine learning algorithms. As a result, the client receives an idea of the market situation in the form of convenient dashboards. This allows managers to see the «full picture» and quickly respond to modifys. Among the main functionality of the platform, the following should be highlighted:
- Real-time monitoring of competitor prices and promotions.
- Comparison of assortment and brand presence on digital shelves.
- Dynamic reports and dashboards with analytics by product category.
- Recommfinishations for price optimization based on collected data and AI.
«Our system allows category managers to free up dozens of hours per month for strategic tinquires,» explains Sivura.
According to her, thanks to the Pricer24 platform, companies can quickly adapt pricing strategies and not lose profits due to modifys in the market situation.
Who applys the platform?
According to Sivura, Pricer24 is of interest to various market participants. Among its clients are:
- Manufacturers and brands of consumer goods.
- Distribution companies and importers.
- Large retail chains and online stores.
- Category managers and marketers of various scales.
The marketing director adds that the platform is being applyd by companies that seek to create decisions based on data, not intuition.
«Both compact brands and large market players come to us»
They all obtain the opportunity to save time and resources by reducing routine analysis processes.
Technology and artificial innotifyigence
Pricer24 software architecture is built on modern large data analysis technologies. The system runs in the cloud and provides parallel processing of hundreds of requests. The first stage is web page parsing: the platform automatically collects prices, product descriptions, and other attributes from different sites. Then, machine learning algorithms are applyd to classify and compare products within categories.
«Machine learning allows us to not only process large amounts of information, but also see for patterns in market data,» declares Sivura.
She adds that in the future, Pricer24 plans to introduce forecasting modules: for example, automatically assessing the probability of a product shortage or a modify in demand when the price modifys. This approach creates analytics even more applyful for customers.
Pricer24 Team
Pricer24 is being developed by a team of specialists with experience in retail, data analytics, and software development. As Lina declares, the team includes former managers of large retail chains, data engineers, and marketers. Thanks to this combination of knowledge, the project managed to combine an understanding of business requireds with innovative technologies.
«We have people who have worked in retail themselves and understand what category managers required,» explains the CMO.
According to her, the team’s diverse experience allows them to quickly respond to customer requests and implement the necessary tools to automate processes.
Startup business model
Pricer24 is distributed as a SaaS (Software as a Service) product. Customers subscribe to the platform by choosing a pricing plan that matches the scale of their business. According to Sivura, there are both basic packages for compact companies and corporate tariffs with advanced functionality and support. Payment is created monthly or annually, depfinishing on the agreement with the client.
«We provide a flexible payment scheme: compact brands can choose a basic subscription, and large chains can choose a corporate tariff with additional features»
With this model, the company receives regular income and can expand the development of the service.
Investments and grants: how the company is financed
According to Sivura, Pricer24 has already attracted support from both government programs and international investors. The team participated in the Google for Startups Ukraine program and received grant support, which supported expand the platform’s capabilities. Later, the project attracted the attention of an accelerator from the United States, which became the company’s first official investor.
«As part of the Google for Startups program, we received not only funding, but also mentoring support from mentors,» notes the marketing director.
She adds that these funds have created it possible to accelerate the development of new features and enattempt into the international market.
What are the main challenges?
Creating a service that monitors thousands of products in online stores has its own difficulties. As Lina Sivura notes, among the main challenges is the technical side of scaling: you required to process a large amount of data and at the same time update the information quickly. In addition, the team has to convince conservative retail chain managers to trust automated analysis.
«We have encountered the fact that some companies are not immediately ready to trust the solution of an automatic system. Our tinquire is to reveal that technology supports create better decisions and saves managers time.»
According to her, skepticism gradually disappears when clients see the practical benefits of the platform.
How the war affected business
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been a serious test for all IT companies, and Pricer24 is no exception. At the launchning of the war, the team had to urgently address security issues and shift work online. Many people shiftd to the western regions or abroad, but this did not stop the development of the project.
«The first months of the war were the most difficult. We had to quickly migrate the server infrastructure and adapt to fully remote work,» admits Sivura.
Some potential customers have put off purchasing additional services, but overall interest in market analytics has increased. According to her observations, Ukrainian brands and retailers have become even more appreciative of quick information processing in order to survive in uncertain times.
Future plans
The Pricer24 product team is seeing to the future with ambitions. Near-term plans include scaling to European markets and releasing new forecasting features.
«Next year, we plan to enter European markets and add demand forecasting modules. Our goal is to create a full-fledged Shi-assistant for a category manager, which will suggest optimal pricing strategies.»
The team continues to see for investors for the next round of funding and plans to increase the number of developers and analysts. This will support fulfill ambitious plans and create Pricer24 a competitive solution in the European market.
We previously wrote about Ukrainian startup ITFin, which created a unified system for managing finances, processes, and resources for IT companies. The platform automates everything from time tracking and HR to invoicing and management reporting, supporting to curb chaos and increase business efficiency.
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