Q: Tell us about your company.

A: Adrich started as a Carnegie Mellon Innovation project to help local bars stay automatically stocked but has since shifted to become an IoT smart replenishment solution for CPG brands.

We dream of a world where no one needs to waste their time with the chore of shopping. With smart replenishment, products reorder themselves, so you never run out, and never waste your time restocking.

Combining smart label hardware, mobile apps, a web dashboard, AI models, and analytics, our agile team is growing the Adrich platform, while managing hundreds of in-field products by Fortune 500 companies including Clorox, Coca-Cola, Colgate, Amazon and Bissel.

Q: What has been your biggest customer success story?

A: We’ve had the pleasure of working with 15 of the fortune 500 brands on market research and smart replenishment. But Olivery, a Netherlands-based olive oil startup, was the first brand to bring our tech to market with real consumers.

Working with us, Olivery, was able to make a smart olive oil bottle that automatically reorders sustainably packaged refill just before you run out so you never have too much or too little at the wrong time.

The product was so successful that pre-orders went through the roof, and Olivery couldn’t keep up with the demand. Olivery’s co-founder even joined Adhithi, Adrich’s founder, for a smart packaging discussion panel this month co-hosted by Plug and Play. It’s great working with other startups because we can relate to each other as they have the foresight to identify upcoming consumer trends and move quickly to seize the opportunity.

Q: How did the company get to where it is today?

A: Adrich was started by CEO Adhithi Aji and cofounder Harish, who developed the initial tech. Once the platform got on its feet in 2016, Innovation Works kept a roof over Adrich’s head at Alphagear Lab. A couple of years later after seeing the endless growth potential of this space, the Sony Innovation Fund and Plug and Play Silicon Valley came along to connect Adrich with its first clients. From there the team learned from its experience and grew.

Adrich has kept Adhithi and Harish up at all hours of the night over the past few years, but Adrich is finally maturing. Now their baby has a quickly growing, full-time family of 15 supporting Adrich through rapid growth.

Q: What does a typical workday look like?

A: At Adrich, you start the day by answering emails from our time difference software teams and clients around the globe. Then you come by our 9am standup meeting for project updates and team shoutouts. You’re late for your next meeting because the standup ran a little long, but no worries because everyone else is late too. Maybe before a client meeting, you have a chance to get the mail for some new products to calibrate models for. The client demo goes well - let’s make sure to document the client’s comments. You check on our in-field projects by updating some spreadsheets before the afternoon R&D and sales strategy meetings. Time to go to the hardware space to help with our shipment set for the end of the week.

Thanks to daylight savings, it’s pitch black by the time you've done some assembly, answered the last emails of the day, and chatted with a bit with the other startups in the space. You’re tired and pretty hungry because you realize you never had lunch, but your CEO ordered Indian food to celebrate getting the delivery out on time. It was a long day, but one you can feel good about.

Q: Where do you see the future of your industry?

A: To shop, humans used to walk to the Bazaar, then we drove to the market, now we shop online. As shopping improves, it takes less time and energy, until eventually, shopping will be effortless and instant. That’s what Adrich smart products are all about; they buy themselves when you're almost out so you, as a consumer, don’t even need to think about it, much less waste any time and for a brand, you will never lose a consumer.

You will never run out of anything or get overstocked ever again. Adrich empowers people to get what they want exactly when they need it.

Q: What are your plans for the future of the company?

A: We’re going to get our smart labels in every consumer's home so we can make people’s lives easier. Zero-touch shopping. Our focus over the next year is growing our team, our platform, and our partnerships. We’re getting faster and expanding our product line to help find new partnerships and strengthen those we already have.

We work directly with many forward-thinking consumer goods companies, big or small, that are looking for innovative ways to better meet their consumer's needs and therefore win in their respective categories, especially in this increasingly competitive omnichannel world. Our solution provides them with an easy way to obtain first-party data and insights that enable them to offer a personalized experience, convenience, and better ways to participate in sustainability to their consumers. We also partner with retailers such as Amazon, providing more ways for companies and consumers to access Adrich's smart replenishment technology. 

Adhithi always says one day we’ll just be sitting on a beach watching the data come in. We’re not that far from the beach: being in millions of homes, saving people time and money.