• In January this year, at the Wipro campus in Chennai, and at a major retail sector exhibition in the US, an intelligent, next-generation, robotic retail shopping assistant made its appearance.

As retail giants around the world look to transform shopping experiences from the mundane to the fantastic, India’s IT giants, largely confined to the IT services sector until now, are contributing innovations to turn shopping science fiction into reality. Using radio frequency identification (RFID), wireless, mobile phone and information technology, India’s IT giants are looking to gain sizable ground in a fast emerging market for front-end retail technologies.

The Magic Mirror for instance, can be typically mounted on a wall in the changing room of the apparel section of a retail store. Short of telling you who is the fairest one of all, the mirror on the wall can provide you details of the shirt or top you picked to try on in the trial room, alternatives in the same or other sizes; the best trouser or skirt, socks or shoe match for your pick.

The Magic Mirror even sends out messages to shop assistants to bring you additional or alternate products of your choice—without you stepping out of the trial room. The mirror, having received rave reviews in the US, is one among a set of innovations created at Infosys applying the not-so-new radio frequency identification technology.

Among other RFID innovations created by a specialised group that has been in existence at Infosys for nearly eight years is a smaller mirror that acts as a lip-to-lipstick matcher for women—apart from back-end supply chain maintenance solutions for the retailers.

While Infosys has contributed the embedded software for the Magic Mirror as part of its Smart Visual Merchandising applications, the visual aesthetics and experience design is from an American company Bigspace, says Girish A R, head of the RFID and Pervasive Solutions Practice at Infosys.

“While RFID technology has been used in retail not too many applications have been seen in the front end. There have been concerns over privacy and costs but that is changing now,” he said.

Pilot studies have shown that retail sales can increase by three-to-five per cent per store with smart visual merchandising and Infosys is in talks with retailers in the US and Europe for deployments, he said.

Wipro Technologies’ The Intelligent Next Generation Associate (TINA), launched at the US National Retail Federation’s annual convention and expo this January, is a software platform on which retailers can deploy customer interaction applications.

“Imagine you are having guests over. You are looking to buy a bottle of good wine. Customer interaction applications on TINA can tell you what food goes best with the wine you chose or vice versa,” says Bhanumurthy B M, Sr Vice President, Retail CPG and Distribution at Wipro Technologies.

Developed as part of the customer experience enrichment programme at Wipro’s Applied Innovation Lab, TINA uses WiFi and RFID technologies and is currently undergoing pilot studies at select stores. “Stores are getting more and more complex. The amount of information is multiplying. Information kiosks are not interactive. Customers would like a dialogue and shop assistants are difficult to keep trained. To ensure superior customer experience technology is coming in,” says Bhanumurthy.

Shopping images for the future include: your local store knowing you have run out of cola cans when you pick the last refrigerated one at your house; mobile phones adding things to your shopping list as you scan advertisements.