Ask by chat, get the aisle and shelf, in big-format stores with no beacons
TL;DR Findbay maps every product in a hypermarket to its aisle, bay and shelf, then answers shoppers who scan a QR code or message the store on a chat app. The same map guides staff picking online orders. Chains pay per store per month, and it works only if the map stays accurate.
Indian big-format stores have grown large. Newer stores at the biggest value chain run to 50,000–60,000 sq ft, roughly twice the older ones[1], and the largest retail conglomerate operates about 18,000 stores across formats[2]. In a store that size a shopper looking for one brand of ragi flour or a phone charger walks the aisles, then hunts down a staff member who probably doesn't know either.
The cost lands in two places. Shoppers give up and leave items off the bill, and staff lose time answering "where is this" when they should be restocking. I couldn't find a public figure for lost sales from unfound items in Indian stores, so you'd need to measure it in pilots.
The seed proposed ultra-wideband (UWB) navigation to the exact shelf and I reframed it. UWB works only on certain recent premium phones[3], which most Indian shoppers do not carry, and it needs radio anchors fitted across every aisle. That's a lot of hardware to help a small minority.
Findbay needs no hardware. Staff walk the store once with a phone, scanning each bay's label and the barcodes on it, which builds a map of where each product sits. Planogram files, where a chain has them, fill the gaps. Shoppers scan a QR code at the entrance or on trolleys, or message the store's chat number, type or speak a product, and get back "Aisle 14, bay C, third shelf" with a simple floor sketch. When a product moves, the scan of that bay updates the map.
Staff picking online orders use the same map to sort their pick list by route. In my opinion that second use matters most, because it saves labour the chain already pays for.
The chain pays and the shopper doesn't. The buyer is the operations or digital head of a hypermarket or large supermarket chain. Pricing would be a monthly fee per store, with a higher tier where the map also drives online-order picking. The chain's own business chat number carries the messages, and the platform charges per message with 1,000 free service messages per number each month[4].
Chains now run online orders out of stores, so pick time has become a real cost. The leading business chat API moved to per-message pricing on 1 July 2025 and resumes charging for service messages on 1 October 2026[4], which makes store-level message budgets predictable. Phone cameras and barcode scanning are good enough that a store can be mapped without special kit.
There's no public figure for spend on in-store wayfinding in India. The narrowest signal is the number of big boxes - The biggest value chain reports 500–518 stores in 2026, with sources disagreeing on the exact count[1]. One wayfinding vendor's work with a US home-improvement chain across 2,300 stores shows large chains will pay for product location at scale[5].
Indoor-mapping vendors sell indoor maps, positioning and a QR-based wayfinding product, and one case with a big US chain ties maps to a product database in the retailer's app[5]. Some large chains build product search into their own apps. I found no Indian vendor offering a hardware-free product finder to mid-size chains. And Indian shoppers rarely download a store's app just to find one item, which is why chat and QR matter.
| Difficulty | Moderate (38/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹45–85 L |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
The software is the easy bit. Keeping the map true is not, because products move weekly and festive displays come and go, and a wrong answer is worse than no answer at all. So map updates have to become part of the routine of staff who already restock shelves.
No sector licence, because Findbay is software and the reframed design uses no radio hardware.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't let AI guess a location it hasn't seen scanned. A confident wrong aisle does more damage than "please ask a staff member".
Want to work out the AI layer for Findbay? Talk to Yash →
I think it's worth a shot for a founder who knows store operations and can sell to chain operations heads. Lead with the picking use, where labour savings are measurable, and treat the shopper finder as the visible extra. Prove first that a store's map stays above 95% accurate for a month with no help from you.
Plan for roughly ₹45–85 L and 6–9 months to launch. There's no hardware to buy, so most of it goes on the product and pilots.
Not for the hardware-free version. If you add Bluetooth beacons you need WPC equipment type approval per model, and shopper numbers fall under the DPDP Act either way.
Yes. Indoor-mapping vendors already sell product location to large US chains, so the gap abroad is mid-size grocers without beacons. Check your local messaging and data rules first.
The free Findbay validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the data and messaging checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for store operators, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Findbay or something close to it? The make-or-break part is a mapping routine store staff keep up without being chased, and I've seen enough store floors to help you design one. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.