Romanian startup Tokinomo raises $1.7M to innovate the retail space

Tokinomo builds and distributes a robotic POS display system that promotes CPG products in grocery stores with astonishing results in brand awareness, brand recall, and sales lift.

Tokinomo robots power retail marketing campaigns for leading consumer goods brands in more than 40 countries through its local partners. When compared to previous periods or to stores that don’t use the devices, Tokinomo campaigns deliver a sales lift of more than 200%, on average, across different categories.

• Global innovative consumer goods brands use the shelf advertising robots to interact and engage with shoppers in grocery stores and create memorable and meaningful shopper experiences.
• For grocery stores and retail media agencies, Tokinomo offers a new revenue stream: monetizing shelf space through advertising. 
• Tokinomo works with local partners such as in-store marketing, shopper marketing, and trade marketing agencies to power creative and scalable experiential campaigns.

Tokinomo robots are native to the supermarket shelf, designed to capture shoppers’ attention in grocery aisles. Through sensors, light, motion, and sound Tokinomo robots bring products to life - no more just sitting unnoticed on the shelf, products become animated and tell the brand’s story. Tokinomo gives CPG brands the unique opportunity to create scalable shopper marketing campaigns, as all the robots are connected to the Internet and can be managed remotely

A group of angel investors led the pre-Series A investment totaling $1.7 million with participation from previous investors, Early Game Ventures. Instore Power Provider (IPP), one of Tokinomo’s best-performing partners and a leading retail marketing company, joined the round.

“About four years ago, when we first found out about Tokinomo, a prototype back then, we knew it was a prodigy child. As a leading retail marketing company, we were among the first users and promoters of Tokinomo, and we enabled its adoption. Now, we are happy to increase our support further, investing in this intelligent customer engagement solution and drive its expansion“, stated Ionut Valeriu Corniciuc, founder and CEO Instore Power Provider (IPP).

In 2022 the startup is focused on developing new products for in-store marketing and expanding the sales efforts. “The new products are inspired by what we learned in the last two years and are based on our customers’ feedback to provide critical data for brands and retailers,” said Ionut Vlad, co-founder, and CEO. “Tokinomo is investing in customer and partner success and is hiring sales reps in focus countries to support and grow our local partners.”

“I think we serve a big market; in-store promotion budgets are a significant part of the total marketing mix. Brands need to have a solution that creates memorable experiences and meaningful brand activations in groceries. At Tokinomo, we believe shopper marketers should design real-life interactions with shoppers that make their products stand out from the crowd. This is our mission, and we will continue to grow and develop new solutions with a focus on gathering more data and allowing brands to define their audience better. I’m very grateful for our journey as a company and would like to thank our backers in this round for their continued support.” said Ionut Vlad, co-founder and CEO of Tokinomo.

Tokinomo is a global award-winning in-store, interactive, brand activation Point of Sales Display startup. Their patented and internationally certified robotic solution for supermarket shelf advertising and POP marketing uses sensor technology with a combination of sound, motion, and light to bring products to life at the shelf and allow them to talk, move, sing or dance in front of the shoppers, on grocery store shelves. 

Each brand activation POSM device is connected to the internet and managed remotely via a cloud-based platform. Consumer goods brands worldwide use the Tokinomo robotic in-store advertising solution with sales lifts of +200% on average.