Shopping for future ideas, IT giants reach trial rooms

• 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.

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.

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