Fayetteville artificial intelligence company ShopTimely has received a $50,000 Technology Development Program award through the Arkansas Economic Development Commission. The ShopTimely team will use this funding to develop its AI-powered shopping recommendation platform.
ShopTimely’s website went live amid the COVID-19 crisis, when out-of-stock and low availability of items became a common occurrence.
The ShopTimely Team
ShopTimely’s founding team consists of Dr. Dinesh Gauri and Dr. Karl Schubert. Schubert serves as ShopTimely’s chief executive officer and Gauri serves as chief strategy officer.
“We are uniquely equipped to address the market needs as both of us have experiences in various complementary aspects such as retailing, analytics, pricing, innovation, technology, and data science. Above all, we are also avid shoppers and would like to really use a product like this,” said Schubert.
Dr. Karl Schubert, Chief Executive Officer 
Dr. Dinesh Gauri, Chief Scientific Officer
The Problem
Based on their personal shopping experiences, ShopTimely’s founders realized that the prices and availability of consumable products with long shelf life vary considerably across various retailers.
“It is humanly not possible for anyone to get the best price and most value for their money despite spending hours comparing the prices. After the COVID crisis started, the demand for items in categories such as sanitizers, gloves, cleaners, and toilet paper went up,” said Gauri.
The Solution
“We are creating an artificial intelligence-based automatic shopping engine that will provide recommendations to users on best time and retailer to buy comparable items,” said Schubert. “Users will be able to get price alerts when the price of items/baskets falls below their specified thresholds. None of the other solutions are comparing items across multiple retailers and the user interface of other solutions are definitely not user friendly.”
When ShopTimely’s website went live, it focused on the categories of greatest relevance to the COVID crisis.
ShopTimely refreshes its site multiple times a day in order to ensure the most up-to-date information is provided for their customers. New products are continuously being added to its list.
ASBTDC Assistance
The Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center helped the company apply for TDP.
“Rebecca Todd of the ASBTDC was invaluable in our exploring, understanding, and responding to the Technology Development Program funding opportunity. She is an excellent interpreter of the requirements, how to translate our ideas and approach into a meaningful form to ensure the TDP team was able to evaluate us and our approach, and she was an excellent sounding board for us.
“We can say, unequivocally, that we would not have been successful without her advice and counsel.” Schubert said.
TDP Project
“This TDP award is going to be extremely useful for us to develop the first production version of the ShopTimely application and to be able to market the site to attract our ‘early adopter’ users to the site. We will also be able to collect valuable feedback and data,” said Gauri.
Growing High-Tech Jobs in Arkansas
The company plans to grow.
“We expect ShopTimely to employ between 12-24 professionals in the next 2-4 years, including management. Areas of expertise for these hires will include web and mobile application development, data science and analytics, data quality assurance and social media marketing,” said Schubert.
What’s next for ShopTimely?
ShopTimely will keep adding new features (such as user account management, more stores, more products, etc.), based on users’ purchasing patterns and data analyses.
“We are very excited to receive this funding from the state and it has assisted us in gaining considerable interest from other investors and partners. We hope to be able to scale the site to include more products and retailers very soon,” said Gauri.
Advice for new TDP applicants
“Firstly, we would recommend they contact Rebecca Todd to understand the various options available for funding, the best timing for application, and assistance in understanding and optimally applying for the funding.
“And, we would recommend that northwest Arkansas-based entities take advantage of upcoming programs such as the University of Arkansas’ Summer I-Corps program, seminars and programs by the University’s Office of Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Startup Junkie, and other similar organizations statewide. Arkansas’ motto, back in the day, was ‘Land of Opportunity,’ and it is still very much the case today,” said Schubert.
Visit the ShopTimely website here.