Alex Ovcharov is the founder and CEO of Wayvee Analytics, a real-time buyer satisfaction and engagement monitoring resolution for retail, and the co-founder of Sensemitter. He has in depth expertise in analysis, product improvement, and buyer conduct evaluation, gained by way of his roles as Product Director at Shazam Jap Europe and thru his entrepreneurial ventures.
His skilled journey contains pioneering profitable augmented actuality (AR) campaigns at Shazam, and co-founding Sensemitter, a gaming expertise analytics firm. Impressed by a discovery in WiFi sensing, Alex and his group of builders and former CERN physicists launched AI algorithms for emotional evaluation, resulting in Wayvee Analytics’s founding in Might 2023. This innovation in Emotion AI is about to remodel how retailers achieve actionable insights on buyer satisfaction and engagement, delivered in real-time with out using cameras or surveys, all whereas respecting customers’ privateness.
What impressed the founding of Wayvee Analytics, and the way did your background with Shazam and Sensemitter contribute to this journey?
My experiences have formed what we do at Wayvee, specializing in emotion recognition. Throughout my time at Shazam Jap Europe, I launched the area’s first Augmented Actuality (AR) marketing campaign and noticed how facial expressions revealed emotional patterns. Main a analysis undertaking utilizing facial coding, I spotted many industries like retail had been focused on such know-how, although privateness and tech limitations had been main challenges.
Combining my background in neuroscience and product improvement, I noticed the necessity for higher buyer understanding in offline environments, the place current instruments had been both gradual in suggestions assortment or privateness invasive. This led us, together with ex-CERN physicists, to develop Wayvee’s Emotion AI, overcoming these challenges with a know-how that operates with radio waves, guaranteeing 100% buyer privateness and delivering insights in actual time.
Might you share extra concerning the discovery in WiFi sensing that sparked the creation of Wayvee?
In Might 2023, I got here throughout an article that actually piqued my curiosity – it was about Wi-Fi sensing for monitoring human motion. It described how Wi-Fi-based gadgets might seize information on how individuals transfer, and the way radio waves are extraordinarily delicate to those place adjustments. That received me considering — if radio waves can detect motion, why couldn’t in addition they seize coronary heart price and respiratory? These are key indicators for understanding emotional states.
Along with Viacheslav Matiunin, Wayvee’s CTO and a physicist who led information evaluation for the LHCb experiment at CERN, and a bunch of researchers and neuroscientists, we constructed a prototype utilizing an everyday Wi-Fi router to check the concept. The group engineered an algorithm that might detect respiratory and micro-movements utilizing simply Wi-Fi indicators, and we patented the know-how. This marked the start of creating our MVP and finally our personal {hardware} system – Wayvee sensor.
Wayvee was launched out of stealth in 2024. Are you able to discuss concerning the preliminary targets of the corporate and the way you envision reworking the retail analytics panorama?
As a deep tech firm targeted on Emotion AI for the bodily world, we see numerous potential purposes for this know-how, from healthcare to good properties. Nevertheless, my expertise in customer-facing markets shortly confirmed that retail had the best potential for impression. Retailers are continually looking for methods to extend buyer satisfaction and the way to higher perceive their viewers, but they usually depend on outdated strategies that don’t present real-time insights or face privateness considerations with private information assortment.
By means of our pilot stage, it’s grow to be clear that retailers want actionable insights, not simply information. It’s not sufficient to easily establish sad prospects — we assist clarify why and supply suggestions for speedy enchancment, conserving prospects glad within the second.
Wayvee makes use of a privacy-preserving sensor with no cameras. How does your know-how handle to seize physiological indicators like respiratory and coronary heart price utilizing radio frequency (RF) waves?
For us, privateness is an enormous deal, and that’s why we don’t depend on cameras. Сameras clearly can monitor the place somebody is and what they’re doing, however deciphering feelings may be difficult, particularly if the particular person’s place or angle throws it off. Are you able to think about what number of cameras you must set up to have the ability to see an individual from completely different angles?
As a substitute, we use radio waves. The Wayvee sensor, put in on cabinets or different key areas, emits radio indicators and captures them after they bounce again, carrying a spread of knowledge — from respiratory and coronary heart price to refined shifts like posture, strolling pace, and gestures. Our AI algorithms then course of this information and convert it into emotional insights, recognizing if an individual is offended, completely satisfied, impartial, and many others.
Are you able to clarify how the AI algorithm processes these physiological indicators and interprets them into actionable insights for retailers?
Wayvee gadgets seize radio wave indicators, permitting our algorithms to establish objects and find individuals. Our AI then analyzes their responses utilizing a educated neural community primarily based on the arousal-valence mannequin, which assesses emotional depth and positivity.
We give attention to real-time emotional shifts moderately than general states, leveraging our in depth dataset to ascertain baselines for figuring out feelings like happiness, disappointment or frustration. This information is distributed to a server that powers Wayvee, offering retailers with real-time analytics, together with Buyer Satisfaction (C-SAT), engagement metrics, and different insights. Retailers can generate customized experiences and obtain alerts for buyer dissatisfaction, enabling speedy motion.
What makes your strategy to emotion AI, which is predicated on physiological indicators like HRV and physique gestures, more practical than conventional strategies like surveys or video surveillance?
We carry every little thing collectively in a single resolution! Conventional surveys are gradual, solely capturing suggestions from about 0.1% of consumers, usually leading to biased responses. Our strategy focuses on unconscious reactions, that are extra correct as a result of they’re involuntary. This enables us to cowl 100% of consumers interacting with a shelf and ship real-time insights inside about two minutes by way of our dashboard.
On the subject of video-based strategies, they depend on cameras, which naturally increase privateness considerations, even when measures like face blurring are utilized. We needed to create a privacy-first resolution that doesn’t make individuals really feel like they’re being watched, which is why we’ve taken a distinct strategy solely — one which’s respectful of buyer privateness whereas nonetheless delivering the insights retailers want.
How does Wayvee’s RF know-how guarantee buyer privateness whereas nonetheless offering deep emotional insights?
It’s fairly easy — we don’t see individuals’s faces or establish their figures in an area. All the information we obtain is totally anonymized. Not like different options that blur faces or create 3D fashions to cope with privateness points, we don’t should do any of that as a result of the best way we collect info is completely completely different. We’re not working with visuals; it’s all accomplished by way of indicators, so privateness considerations simply don’t come into play the identical manner.
Wayvee affords immediate suggestions on metrics like buyer satisfaction (C-SAT) and engagement. How do these insights impression a retailer’s skill to make swift and efficient operational adjustments?
At our core, we give attention to delivering actionable insights for enchancment. We transcend metrics like dwell time and common pace, which may be relative however don’t inform the complete story. The true worth lies in combining these metrics with deeper insights that designate the outcomes. With our information, retailers can optimize retailer layouts by way of A/B testing, experimenting with shelf preparations, shows, and retail media to boost buyer satisfaction.
We additionally help with workload planning by recommending useful resource allocation primarily based on buyer circulation and engagement. For instance, throughout a pilot undertaking with a sneaker retailer, we found that sooner buyer motion correlated with greater purchases. Employees involvement was really slowing down the method, so we instructed lowering workers throughout peak instances, which elevated gross sales. It’s wonderful how small adjustments can have such a major impression!
As extra retailers undertake privacy-driven options, the place do you see the way forward for in-store analytics heading? How do you propose to increase Wayvee’s know-how and attain within the coming years?
I feel the way forward for in-store analytics will certainly lean towards being extra customer-focused. It’s not nearly making their purchasing expertise smoother and extra satisfying, but additionally about respecting their privateness. With Wayvee, we now have huge plans forward. Past what we’re already doing, there are such a lot of potential use instances for our tech — whether or not it’s measuring the effectiveness of retail media or understanding how several types of content material impression prospects. We’re even trying into issues like value prediction primarily based on buy intent. There’s a lot alternative to assist retailers evolve whereas conserving their prospects on the middle of the purchasing expertise.
By way of scalability, how straightforward is it for retailers to combine Wayvee’s resolution into their current retailer infrastructure?
Our system is simple to put in and requires minimal technical know-how, needing no ongoing upkeep. Retailers can set it up in simply 10 to half-hour by attaching it to a shelf and setting the monitoring zone. Not like digital camera techniques, there’s no want for a big upfront set up. Retailers can begin with a couple of sensors throughout a take a look at interval and increase as wanted. Every system covers a 3.5-meter vary, and as soon as they ship us their retailer structure, we’ll add it to the dashboard for correct information assortment. All system information is centralized in a single dashboard for simple monitoring and comparability.
Thanks for the good interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to Wayvee Analytics.
