NTT DOCOMO Ventures Invests in VCOGNITION TECHNOLOGIES

NTT DOCOMO Ventures, Inc. headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan and led by President and CEO, Takayuki Inagawa has invested in Vcognition Technologies, Inc. (Zippin), headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA and led by President and CEO, Krishna Motukuri.

Zippin provides total solutions for automated checkout stores.

Today, there is growing demand for retail store operators to improve efficiency of the operation of the stores. The “Grab & Go“ style stores that eliminate cashiers are one of the best ways to improve efficiency. However, it is difficult for store operators to develop and deploy all of the features and hardware that are required to start the checkout-free stores.

Zippin offers the next generation of checkout-free technology enabling retailers to quickly deploy frictionless shopping in their stores. Zippin’s edge processing camera technology tracks products and behavior of customers in the store, and the original shelf sensor detects whether the product is taken. The AI-powered sensor fusion technology combines all the sensor data to enable checkout-free functions.

The investment in Zippin enables both NTT Group companies that provide payment solutions and user authentication solutions, and Zippin to accelerate the development of industry-changing solutions.

NTT DOCOMO Ventures will continue to promote collaborations with startups and the development of new services based on NTT Group’s advanced technologies, as a part of the Group’s ongoing endeavor to resolve social issues and create new value for customers through innovation.

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