Companies spend millions of dollars running thousands of promotions per month, but they don’t always have an understanding of which ones work better than others. And when the promotions were analyzed, it turned out that most of them didn’t help the company’s bottom line at all.
Cuona, a Mexico-based SaaS company, logs all promotions to show consumers which packaged goods companies and retailers are doing well, and to automatically update product prices and inventory in line with promotions.
Seeing challenges around pricing and promotions, Chema Sanroman and Agustín Magaña, with experience in data science, artificial intelligence, and CPG revenue and pricing, started Cuona in 2017.
Here’s how it works: Kuona built data-driven tools to predict demand and track customer behavior. The tools integrate with the company’s data in real time and use neural networks to predict whether to increase investment in promotions by maintaining or increasing sales.
“Our tools help them understand what’s working and what’s not,” CEO Sanroman told TechCrunch.
Currently, Cuona operates in the United States, Mexico, Peru and Ecuador and has opened an office in Brazil. It offers two products, including Price and Promotion Update and Perfect Order, which help companies reduce returns and out-of-stock items at a single point of sale.
The company has doubled its revenue and customers over the past two years and is profitable. It counts on a list of 15 to 20 customers, such as Coca-Cola and OxxO convenience stores.
Today it announced $6 million in seed capital, led by Cometa and including Sia Cathay Latham and FEMSA Ventures. The new investment gives Quona a total of around $7.2 million.
Sanroman intends to deploy the new financing for the continued expansion and geographic presence of the group in Latin America and the United States, as well as to establish a group in Europe.
