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 intensive expertise in analysis, product growth, and buyer habits 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 workforce of builders and former CERN physicists launched AI algorithms for emotional evaluation, resulting in Wayvee Analytics’s founding in Could 2023. This innovation in Emotion AI is ready to rework how retailers achieve actionable insights on buyer satisfaction and engagement, delivered in real-time with out the usage of 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 challenge utilizing facial coding, I spotted many industries like retail have been involved in such know-how, although privateness and tech limitations have been main challenges.
Combining my background in neuroscience and product growth, I noticed the necessity for higher buyer understanding in offline environments, the place present instruments have been both sluggish 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.
May you share extra concerning the discovery in WiFi sensing that sparked the creation of Wayvee?
In Could 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 units may seize knowledge on how folks transfer, and the way radio waves are extraordinarily delicate to those place adjustments. That obtained me pondering — if radio waves can detect motion, why couldn’t in addition they seize coronary heart price and respiration? These are key indicators for understanding emotional states.
Along with Viacheslav Matiunin, Wayvee’s CTO and a physicist who led knowledge evaluation for the LHCb experiment at CERN, and a gaggle of researchers and neuroscientists, we constructed a prototype utilizing an everyday Wi-Fi router to check the thought. The workforce engineered an algorithm that might detect respiration and micro-movements utilizing simply Wi-Fi alerts, and we patented the know-how. This marked the start of creating our MVP and finally our personal {hardware} machine – Wayvee sensor.
Wayvee was launched out of stealth in 2024. Are you able to speak concerning the preliminary objectives of the corporate and the way you envision remodeling the retail analytics panorama?
As a deep tech firm centered on Emotion AI for the bodily world, we see varied potential purposes for this know-how, from healthcare to sensible houses. Nonetheless, my expertise in customer-facing markets rapidly confirmed that retail had the best potential for impression. Retailers are consistently searching for methods to extend buyer satisfaction and how one can higher perceive their viewers, but they usually depend on outdated strategies that don’t present real-time insights or face privateness considerations with private knowledge assortment.
By our pilot stage, it’s change into clear that retailers want actionable insights, not simply knowledge. It’s not sufficient to easily determine sad clients — we assist clarify why and supply suggestions for fast enchancment, retaining clients glad within the second.
Wayvee makes use of a privacy-preserving sensor with no cameras. How does your know-how handle to seize physiological alerts like respiration and coronary heart price utilizing radio frequency (RF) waves?
For us, privateness is a giant 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 might be difficult, particularly if the individual’s place or angle throws it off. Are you able to think about what number of cameras you have to set up to have the ability to see an individual from totally different angles?
As an alternative, we use radio waves. The Wayvee sensor, put in on cabinets or different key places, emits radio alerts and captures them once they bounce again, carrying a variety of information — from respiration and coronary heart price to refined shifts like posture, strolling velocity, and gestures. Our AI algorithms then course of this knowledge and convert it into emotional insights, recognizing if an individual is offended, pleased, impartial, and so forth.
Are you able to clarify how the AI algorithm processes these physiological alerts and interprets them into actionable insights for retailers?
Wayvee units seize radio wave alerts, permitting our algorithms to determine objects and find folks. 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 concentrate on real-time emotional shifts somewhat than total states, leveraging our intensive dataset to determine baselines for figuring out feelings like happiness, disappointment or frustration. This knowledge is shipped 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 fast motion.
What makes your method to emotion AI, which is predicated on physiological alerts like HRV and physique gestures, simpler than conventional strategies like surveys or video surveillance?
We deliver the whole lot collectively in a single resolution! Conventional surveys are sluggish, solely capturing suggestions from about 0.1% of shoppers, usually leading to biased responses. Our method focuses on unconscious reactions, that are extra correct as a result of they’re involuntary. This permits us to cowl 100% of shoppers interacting with a shelf and ship real-time insights inside about two minutes by way of our dashboard.
In relation to video-based strategies, they depend on cameras, which naturally elevate privateness considerations, even when measures like face blurring are utilized. We needed to create a privacy-first resolution that doesn’t make folks really feel like they’re being watched, which is why we’ve taken a distinct method totally — 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 folks’s faces or determine their figures in an area. All the info we obtain is absolutely anonymized. Not like different options that blur faces or create 3D fashions to cope with privateness points, we don’t must do any of that as a result of the best way we collect data is completely totally different. We’re not working with visuals; it’s all performed by way of alerts, so privateness considerations simply don’t come into play the identical means.
Wayvee gives immediate suggestions on metrics like buyer satisfaction (C-SAT) and engagement. How do these insights impression a retailer’s potential to make swift and efficient operational adjustments?
At our core, we concentrate on delivering actionable insights for enchancment. We transcend metrics like dwell time and common velocity, which might be relative however don’t inform the complete story. The actual worth lies in combining these metrics with deeper insights that specify the outcomes. With our knowledge, retailers can optimize retailer layouts by way of A/B testing, experimenting with shelf preparations, shows, and retail media to reinforce 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 challenge with a sneaker retailer, we found that sooner buyer motion correlated with increased purchases. Workers involvement was truly slowing down the method, so we steered decreasing employees throughout peak occasions, which elevated gross sales. It’s superb 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 intend to increase Wayvee’s know-how and attain within the coming years?
I believe the way forward for in-store analytics will certainly lean towards being extra customer-focused. It’s not nearly making their buying expertise smoother and extra gratifying, but in addition 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 circumstances for our tech — whether or not it’s measuring the effectiveness of retail media or understanding how several types of content material impression clients. We’re even trying into issues like value prediction primarily based on buy intent. There’s a lot alternative to assist retailers evolve whereas retaining their clients on the middle of the buying expertise.
By way of scalability, how simple is it for retailers to combine Wayvee’s resolution into their present retailer infrastructure?
Our machine 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 digicam methods, there’s no want for a big upfront set up. Retailers can begin with a number of sensors throughout a take a look at interval and increase as wanted. Every machine 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 knowledge assortment. All machine knowledge is centralized in a single dashboard for simple monitoring and comparability.
Thanks for the nice interview, readers who want to be taught extra ought to go to Wayvee Analytics.
