A new venture to provide supermarkets with real-time price display and monitoring solution using intelligent "big data" software is being launched in Ireland.
The new initiative could see shoppers benefit from increased competition and more special offers and discounts on fruit, vegetables and other perishable foods.
Former banker Roy Horgan, the founder of MarketHub, has formed a joint venture with SolarPrint that he claims will be the first of its kind in the world, offering a solution that incorporates solar panel technology into wifi-enabled electronic price display tags from Austrian maker Imagotag.
It will combine these with software provided by Dublin-based retail data and intelligence firm Profitero and US price optimisation company Revionics.
The Irish Times reports that he is investing “a six-figure sum” in the new startup, which officially launches to the retail industry in the US next month.
It has developed unique intellectual property that will give large retailers more control over their pricing strategies, improving their ability to compete with the likes of Aldi and Lidl – which have a combined 13.8 per cent share of Ireland’s estimated €9 billion grocery market – and increasingly with the likes of online supermarket Ocado in Britain, and Amazon Grocery, an arm of the online retail giant that offers 200,000 grocery items.
