Paid before-and-after layout tests for regional grocery chains
TL;DR Floortrial runs controlled layout experiments for regional supermarket and value-retail chains. It reads the cameras and billing data a store already has, moves one thing (an aisle, a promo bay, the entry path) and reports what changed in zone reach and sales. Chains pay per study, not for yet another dashboard.
Indian chains are opening stores at a furious pace. The largest retail conglomerate ran about 19,340 stores in February 2026, one value-fashion chain 963 across 313 cities and its parent group more than 1,100[1]. Behind them sit hundreds of regional grocery and value chains with 10 to 80 stores each, and they redesign layouts by gut feel or by copying a bigger rival.
Most of these stores already record every aisle on CCTV, but nobody watches the footage unless something gets stolen. Heatmap tools exist, and one Indian vendor sells footfall, dwell and queue analytics in India[2].
A heatmap still leaves the store manager stuck on the real question. If I move the dairy cooler, do I sell more or just shift sales around? Nobody answers that with a controlled test.
Floortrial sells an answer to one layout question at a time. A chain picks a change, such as moving staples to the back wall or adding a festive bay near billing. Floortrial picks matched test and control stores, hooks into the existing camera recorders and the billing export, and measures four weeks before and four weeks after.
What comes out is a short readout - share of shoppers who reached each zone, time spent there, basket size and category sales, with the control-store change subtracted. Computer vision counts and tracks anonymous body shapes and does not identify faces. If the result holds then the chain rolls the change out with a number behind it.
The product is part service on purpose. An analyst designs each test, because bad test design is how layout data ends up ignored. Software does the counting and the comparison, so one analyst can run 6–10 studies a month.
Shoppers caught on camera are data principals under the DPDP Act, and no legitimate-use ground in Section 7 covers retail analytics[3]. Floortrial needs store notices and a no-faces design from day one.
The buyer is the head of operations or category at a chain with 10–80 stores. Global path-analysis vendors sell to retailers directly[4], but their prices aren't public. My working assumption is ₹2–4 L per study covering 4–8 stores, with a six-study annual plan for repeat buyers. FMCG brands paying for a promo bay are a second payer, since they want proof the bay actually moved volume.
Store openings and leasing are at a record pace, with about 8.9 million sq ft of retail space leased in the top seven cities in 2025[1]. Every new store needs a layout. Local firms in India now sell camera-based people counting[2], so the vision part isn't research anymore. And the DPDP Rules process has made notice and consent expectations clearer[5].
There is no published figure for India's in-store analytics or layout-testing market. The usable signal is the count of chains. The bigger players above run thousands of stores[1], and one Indian vendor names a footwear chain with 200+ stores as a camera-analytics customer[2]. That claim is the vendor's own.
Treat chain counts as your target list and not as market size.
One Indian firm sells camera-based footfall counting, dwell heatmaps and checkout queue alerts[2]. One US vendor tracks full shopper paths and claims 600+ retailers in 100+ countries, with no India presence listed[4]. Both sell continuous monitoring.
The gap is a fixed-price experiment with a control group, sold to chains too small for an analytics team.
| Difficulty | Moderate (39/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹40–75 L |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
The vision models are off the shelf. The hard parts are getting usable feeds from old, badly placed recorders and convincing operators that a four-week test with controls is worth the wait. Selling to regional chains also means lots of small deals, often with the founder sitting in the room.
No sector licence is needed to run layout studies. Shopper video is the part that carries real legal weight.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't trust AI to design the test or to call a result real on its own. The analyst decides both, and messy feeds from old recorders can quietly skew the counts.
Want to work out the AI layer for Floortrial? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
This is a good fit if you've worked in retail operations or category management and can sit with store managers. If you want to sell a pure dashboard then look elsewhere. Prove one thing first - that three of five pilot studies show a measurable sales change the chain then acts on.
Plan for roughly ₹40–75 L, mostly on analysts, software and the long sales cycle with regional chains.
No sector licence, but shopper video is personal data under the DPDP Act. You need consent and notice, and any camera you supply must be BIS registered.
Yes, chains everywhere argue about layouts without numbers. Check your local privacy law on shopper video first.
The free Floortrial validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the data-protection checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for chain operators, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Floortrial or something close to it? The make-or-break work is designing tests that give clear answers despite festival spikes and old cameras, and that's exactly the kind of thing I help founders with. 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.