Nigerian startup Seta Field Services has launched a shelf-execution tracking application that helps consumer goods companies measure share-of-shelf, distribution and presence across multiple outlets in multiple locations.
Founded in January 2019, Seta Field Services measures distribution of products, people and objects on behalf of consumer goods companies. Its initial product is FETA, which stands for “field execution tracking application”, which measures share-of-shelf of products in unstructured markets such as Nigeria’s.
FETA counts the number of times a product appears in a photo or video, and compares it with the number of times other selected products appear, hence providing share-of-shelf, presence, and distribution figures when a sales representative, store owner or independent data collector takes an image of a shelf within a store.
“The platform employs artificial intelligence in measuring and tracking share-of-shelf of a product versus full category. It can aggregate this data across several locations or products,” said Aito Osemegbe, who co-founded Seta Field Services alongside Christianah Ajayi.
Companies need to know certain market metrics, such as market share and share-of-shelf, to make informed business discussions, Osemegbe said, and though some international companies provide this data they are not suited to the unstructured nature of Nigeria’s markets.
“Also, they haven’t been able to drill down to store-by-store data, providing raw actionable insights on what happens on the customer’s shelves. The unique offering FETA brings is reliability and detail of data,” Osemegbe said.
So far, Seta has run a six-month pilot of FETA with the merchandising team of Flour Mills of Nigeria, which came to an end in March as a result of COVID-19.
“The results from that pilot helped us to increase FETA’s recognition capacity from 76 per cent to 92 per cent,” said Osemegbe.
“We currently provide services to TSQ Alayo, a consumer goods distribution company in Ogun State. The revenues have helped close out 20 per cent of our app development expenses. Operations have been stunted because of COVID, but the plan is to gain a minimum of five paying customers before mid-2021.”
The self-funded startup is also looking for funding to improve FETA and help it scale.
“FETA has what it takes to concurrently serve thousands of companies, and is crafted in such a way that each company enjoys finer insights and data the more companies are on board,” said Osemegbe.
“We also need funding to explore other capabilities of the FETA app, around facial recognition in selected public places and object recognition. The applications include monitoring and tracking, and auto billing, people in selected locations, vehicles along selected roads, while staying within allowance of local and international laws.”
