The micromarket is a smart refrigerator with fresh prepared food and other goods. In fact, this is a small cafe where retailers and food manufacturers sell their goods. To make a purchase in the micro market, you need to download the B-Pay application, which was developed by the company.
How Briskly micromarkets work: in retail outlets where micromarkets / coffee points are located and which are connected to the Briskly platform, buyers serve themselves, they scan the barcodes of goods located in the micromarket, pay for the purchase through the cash desk in a smartphone - the B-Pay application (Google Play / App Store).
Briskly itself manufactures micromarkets and other offline retail equipment at its own plant in Vyborg.
History of the company
How did the startup start
It all started in 2018, when the founder of the company, Gleb Kharitonov, lived in Yaroslavl, developing his own IT studio. Life there was measured, things were solved slowly.
Gleb did not like to wait. And he was especially annoyed by queues in stores. He was interested in technology and learned that in China they came up with an idea to pay for goods without personnel in Bingo Box container stores. At the same time, the Amazon Go standalone supermarket was launching in the US.
The entrepreneur wondered why in Russia there is still no such technology as in China or the USA? The Bingo Box container worked on machine vision, and it was possible to pay for goods in a smartphone. Without hesitation, he sold the only apartment, loaded things into the car and left for Moscow to make the first unmanned container store in Russia.
Briskly means "fast"
It was 2018. The team studied the Amazon Go technology and developed a neural network that tracked the actions of buyers and the payment process. With the money left with Gleb, a sea container was bought, which was equipped with sensors and cameras. Now this is written on Wikipedia.
The project was called Briskly - which means "fast" in English. In order for users to quickly open the container door and scan the barcodes of goods, another technical solution was needed - a cash register in the buyer's smartphone.
This is how the B-Pay app was born. It took 2 million rubles to equip the container, and another 3 million rubles were invested in the development of an IT solution for the autonomous operation of the store.
To raise funds for the development of the project, Gleb Kharitonov applied for 50 competitions and grants. All of a sudden, VISA got interested in the contactless trading project. The startup won the VISA Everywhere Initiative competition and received a grant of 5 million rubles.
How micromarkets appeared
The year 2019 has come. The container store was of interest to retailers, but only as a concept. The project needed a clear product and regular sales.
At one of the exhibitions, Gleb was asked to make an autonomous format, but in a more compact form. For example, on the scale of one refrigerator that can be put in the office. In a couple of weeks, the product was redesigned: all the technologies that were in the container — sensors, locks, cameras, smart Module — were transferred to a refrigerator.
The company sold 40 micromarkets in the first month, and then another 200 by the end of the year. This is how smart refrigerators for offline trading became Briskly's staple.
Purchase of a plant
Micromarkets became more and more popular. In 2020, Briskly sold 1,000 micromarkets and made 400,000 cashless purchases. The startup has become the only company on the market that offers proven Scan&Pay technology.
In 2021, Briskly raised funds to purchase the Vyborg Refrigeration Plant. Now you can create a completely autonomous product in your own production. In the first month of work, a batch of several hundred refrigerators was released and sold.
By March, we started to produce 54 products, among which were not only refrigerators, but also post- and food-stacks. Coffee machines and even a self-service checkout have been added to the assortment. We continue to expand the range of equipment and update the platform software. And have already made a million purchases without queues.
The approximate cost of refrigeration equipment at the time of 2022 is in the range from 45,000 - 200,000 rubles
