Talespin Is Bringing Machine Learning and Chatbots to Physical Retail

Talespin is a young Delhi-based startup that wants to place chatbots inside stores. The idea, according to Talespin's product head Tanay Dixit, is to help bring some of the benefits of the online shopping experience - such as personalised recommendations - offline as well, at a low cost. The idea was actually born when Dixit tried to go shopping for a t-shirt at Shopper's Stop, and after being shown a lot of different ones, he finally found something he liked, only to learn it wasn't available in his size. He realised that if there was a system to browse through the store's entire catalogue like you would an e-commerce marketplace, then he would have been able to get a better idea more quickly, and it could even have allowed him to place an order for the out- of-stock item, to be delivered to him. And so that's exactly what he set out to build.