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.

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