Executive Summary

The Coresight Research team attended London Tech Week 2018 held June 11–17.We attended two retail-tech startup pitches during the week: Tech London Advocates’ Retail Tech 50 at startup incubator Cocoon Networks and Project Kairos London’s Retail TechPitch at trade show TechXLR8. Here, we profile 13 of the retail-tech startups we met.

• Tech London Advocates’ Retail Tech 50 showcased five London-based retail-tech startups: self-checkout technology MishiPay, physical store-monitoring platform Third Eye, mobile shopping app developing platform PoQ, retail and hospitality staff app Yapster and omnichannel commerce platform Mercaux.
• Project Kairos’ event introduced eight retail-tech startups including augmented reality (AR) company Digital Pop-Ups, self-checkout platform Planckly, e-commerce cybersecurity firm Prodaft and fresh-food automated sales kiosk Servo Kiosk.
• Many of the companies that we saw during London Tech Week 2018 collaborate with leading retailers. MishiPay’s technology is used by French home improvement retailer Leroy Marlin and German electronics retailer Saturn, while PoQ’s clients include pure-play retailers Missguided, Made.com and PrettyLittleThings.