Qsic—an Australia-based global intelligent in-store audio platform with a key North America office in Dallas—has closed a $25 million Series B funding round led by Hedosophia.
The company’s platform elevates the in-store experience and drives incremental revenue for in-store audio and retail media for leading retailers and quick service restaurants (QSRs) such as 7-Eleven, Coles Express, and McDonald’s to boost in-store sales.
“Retailers that have deployed our tech are seeing sales lifts average up to 14%, and we’ve barely scratched the surface with our technology capabilities,” Matt Elsley, co-founder and chief executive officer at Qsic, said in a statement. “The demand for our solution is strong. Now, we’re positioned to accelerate product development to enhance our tech capabilities and put new resources in place to grow our network to drive even greater, measurable outcomes for our retail partners and brands globally.”
The company last year opened an office in Dallas as the home base for Elsley, who’s in North Texas to support his company’s new business growth across North America.
Qsic said it reaches more than 100 million shoppers at the point of purchase monthly, with more than 70,000 speakers set to deploy across North America over the next year. The funds will be used to support the expansion of its AI-powered in-store audio platform into new retail locations, accelerate product development and scale its sales team, the company said.
Enhancing in-store experience and sales
Qsic said that despite retail media’s tremendous online growth, research shows that 85% of all shopping still happens in-store.
In-store retail media has faced more barriers to adoption, like high costs to implement, measurement challenges, and difficulty scaling, the company said.
Qsic said it enhances the in-store experience and drives incremental revenue through curated, intelligent content delivered dynamically based on shopper behavioral patterns. Its proprietary intelligent audio solutions were developed to address the industry’s top challenges and lower the barrier of entry with a simple setup designed to scale with advanced measurement capabilities and automated planning tools.
In an effort to support scale and customization, Qsic said it developed a proprietary generative AI model, Lucy, for the creation of custom audio ad content, including on-demand voiceovers.
It said that Lucy dynamically creates and localizes ad content in real time, leveraging retailer data to include details such as local pricing, inventory, and weather conditions to increase engagement with shoppers.
Rolling out ‘Gulp Radio’ in thousands of 7-Elevens
Qsic recently announced a partnership with Irving-based convenience store chain 7-Eleven to roll out Gulp Radio in more than 5,000 stores across the U.S. by the end of 2024, with the goal to be fully deployed in 12,000 stores by the end of 2025. The rollout includes all 7-Eleven, Speedway, and Stripes stores nationwide.
Qsic said that once fully deployed at scale, Gulp Radio will be one of North America’s largest commercial radio networks enabling advertisers to reach the world’s largest convenience chain’s 13 million daily shoppers.
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