MediaMarkt Startup Challenge - Paving the Way for RetailTech

September 26, 2022

First started in 2018 MediaMakt Startup Challenge powered by Hackquarters still in 2022 is paving the way for RetailTech and revolutionizing the retail landscape. After 2 online programs in 2020-2021, this year MediaMarkt Startup Challenge 2022 will be delivered offline on the 1 November in Istanbul. 

MediaMarkt Startup Challenge to Shape the Future of RetailTech

MediaMarkt Startup Challenge brings together entrepreneurs, who are shaping retail technologies of the future today. The Program is driven by the aim to enrich customer experience; endeavoring to boost the most innovative solutions and ideas in the retail sector.

MediaMarkt and partners are looking for retail tech startups specializing in 3 categories: Retail Sales Technologies to transform the decision-making process of the customers in online and physical stores, bringing more exciting technological experience; Post-Sales Technologies to enhance customer experience and increase customer satisfaction after sales; and Digital Transformation Processes to improve the efficiency of sales teams and staff and streamline all kinds of business processes.

MediaMarkt Startup Challenge provides countless opportunities to RetailTech startups in various verticals and the opportunity to pilot their products in MediaMarkt stores in Turkey and Europe, cloud credits, mentorship support from Google experts and other prizes from the Partners. 

Applications are free and open until the 5 October 2022.

As we prepare for 2022 Challenge, let’s take a look back at highlights from the previous years.


2018

Frst year of the MediaMarkt Startup Challenge. 11 startups were selected to present their ideas at the Chain Stores Association Conference and a PoC opportunity with MediaMarkt and Tekzen. The winners were;

BuyBuddy (first place), a RetailTech startup producing smart tags for physical stores; 

Udentify (second place), a business intelligence solution aiming to create better solutions for manmade market research techniques by using face recognition and body tracking; 

Pacer (third place), a multi-award-winning new generation social learning platform built to manage and maximize corporate learning engagement. 


2019

In 2019, three winners from the 11 selected startups were; 

Bagaj (first place), a locker service that can be used via a mobile phone app; 

Poltio (second place), which helps brands access, engage with, and learn from their users with the help of interactive content;  

Pegneon (third place) is a serious games company specializing in educational video games for employee training. Between 2018-19, 165+ startup applications were received from various verticals, including retail sales tech, corporate digitization process, and post-sales tech.


2020

In 2020, we strived to turn the pandemic into an opportunity and received more than 150 applications from 39 countries. 11 startups were chosen to pitch their ideas to the jury, and the 3 startups that got the chance to partner with MediaMarkt in 2020 were;

Shopi, a SaaS-based, all-in-one omnichannel retail store operations platform with an order management system in place; 

Yosh.AI, a deep tech company that automates the communication between enterprises and users with AI voice text assistants; 

B2Metric, is an AI-native predictive analytics solution that automates the machine learning pipeline for the company’s customer journey, price, and purchase optimization problem.

MediaMarkt Startup Challenge 2020


2021

Last year the interest in the program was even stronger: 208 startups from 46 countries applied to the program. 11 startups took the stage during the challenge. The winners of the 2021 batch are:

Optiyol: Optiyol is a B2B Software solution that helps retailers and carriers with end-to-end logistics optimization, from planning with advanced algorithms to execution with a driver app. Optiyol reduces fuel costs by 15-20%, fleet size by 5-10%, and improves on-time performance by 30%.

MoEngage: MoEngage is an intelligent customer engagement platform for the customer-obsessed marketer. They help you delight your customers and retain them for longer. With MoEngage, you can analyze customer behavior and engage them with personalized communication across the web, mobile, and email. MoEngage is a full-stack solution consisting of powerful customer analytics, AI-powered customer journey orchestration, and personalization - in one dashboard.

Qumpara: Qumpara is a mobile app that rewards shoppers by snapping a photo of their receipt. That's how we activate promotion and loyalty offers to shoppers, build one on one relationships in a personalized manner, and leverage technology to solve the data and communication gap between the consumers' brands and shoppers.


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