SmartSito (Feb - May 2020)
Summary
Our team, "Smartsito", participated in the MS Discover AI Challenge: Smarter and Sustainable Economies ran by Agorize . As part of the challenge we ideated and developed a business plan, marketing strategy and a prototype to help reduce food waste. We got to the finale of the competition being among the Top 3 teams of the retail & E-commerce category. I wrote a blog post related to this challenge.
Objective
To ideate and develop a business plan, marketing strategy and a prototype to participate in the 2020 Microsoft Discover AI Challenge: Smarter and Sustainable Economies.
Business Problem
Food waste is a big problem in the world today:
- More than 33% of food is wasted globally
- More than 50% of food production is wasted in Canada costing $17 billion dollars per year
- 47% of the waste come from househould
Business Opportunity
The opportunity is to create app that:
- Allows consumers to use their smartphones to scan purchases receipts and keep track of the expiring date of the items they buy in one simple step
- Sent notifications of the items that are about to expire and provided recipes and ideas to the consumer on how to use the items
- incent the use of the platform and sharing data by a reward program in partnership with retailers
- Help retailers to plan better inventories and reduce waste
Tools
- Flask (Python)
- Pandas
- Azure Cognitive Services
- Azure Websites
Achievements
- We got to the finale of the competition: Top 3 in the Retail & E-commerce category (237 initial teams in 4 categories)
- We proposed a solution for smart food waste leveraging AI and Analytics to create smarter and sustainable economies
- We pitched our idea in front of specilized jury in business and AI
Your tool to smartly reduce your food waste!
Value for consumers: Education and awareness of food waste reduction at home
Value for retailers: Opportunity to get detailed insights