Exclusive: Gigwalk, a mobile app that allows consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies to enable a mobile workforce, has raised $10 million from Nokia Growth Partners (NGP), new investor Randstad Holding NV and existing investors August Capital, Harrison Metal and SoftTech.
Gigwalk, which launched in 2011, has pivoted from employing a broad mobile workforce for random tasks from companies to allowing CPG companies to track campaigns and shelves for product placement in stores.
As CEO Bob Bahramipour explains, the company is now an enterprise platform to give consumer packaged goods companies insight into retail operations and campaigns. The software aims to eliminate blind spots in trade spend, product distribution and in-store merchandising.
According to Bahramipour, $800 billion in revenue is lost globally to out of stock merchandise, and $20 billion in lost CPG revenue due to the wrong items on the wrong shelf. Gigwalk still employs 500,000 mobile-enabled independent contractors, also known as Gigwalkers, who can be deployed to any store location, delivering real-time, on-the-ground visibility.
For example, a company could enable Gigwalk to find workers to check on stock levels for a campaign, promotion, pricing and more. These workers will visit the stores and take pictures, enabling companies to see when their stock is running low, when their items are askew on a shelf and other CPG placement issues that could affect sales. Companies can also bring their own teams on Gigwalk and use the platform internally.
Customers include Frito-Lay, Microsoft, Reckitt Benckiser, 7-Eleven and more.
The new vision for the startup is similar in some ways to what Premise is doing for economic data (and also for CPG companies in developing countries).