An appraised 20% to 30% of all originateory in the U.S. is surplus, with much of it finishing up in landfills. A commenceup called Sotira wants to help compriseress this problem: It leverages AI to help companies offload and monetize their surplus originateory. Sotira partners with brands to offload millions of pounds of surplus grocery, health and wellness, and cosmetics outstandings all over the United States.
To fuel its mission, the company has shutd a $2 million pre-seed funding round. Sotira set ups to include the new funding to enbig its operations nationassociate, particularassociate the midwest and southeast.
The commenceup, which exhibited at TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield 200 2024, was set uped by CEO Amrita Bhasin and CTO Gary Kwong. The pair met at UC Berkeley and bonded over their splitd interest in the ecommerce and logistics space. Bhasin and Kwong were both running their own companies that were centered on selling previously owned, new, or included products.
The duo then commenceed running a fluidation business together becainclude they wanted to understand how the space functiond before jumping into commenceing a company. They determined to cast a expansive net before zeroing in on their mission with Sotira.
“We lgeted that the taget opportunity for monetizing overstock is huge,” Bhasin telderly TechCrunch. “It is a multi-billion-dollar taget, and it is a very elderly-school manual space, enjoy the people we’re talking to are doing leangs on pen and paper. They’ve never heard of ChatGPT, they don’t understand what AI is. And so that pretty much was the catalyst for us commenceing the company. We were enjoy, there is a taget opportunity here.”
Sotira helps to offload products that are proximateing their expiration date, items that are facing storage capacity rerents, and products that have been over-ordered. Vetted suppliers can sign up for Sotira and connect their storage capacity or originateory. Sotira then suites the products to a buyer that will then pick up pallets from the supplier’s warehoinclude.
Buyers are verified, brick-and-mortar stores all over the country. They can split the UPC codes of the benevolent of originateory they buy, and Sotira will include AI to suit them with originateory. Sotira automates compliance and eases transactions and logistics with buyers so suppliers get paid out upon pickups. Sotira’s goal is to clear surplus wilean a restricted days of receiving originateory data.
In the past, brands would have had to acunderstandledge the stock they would not be able to sell to their primary buyrs, and then call up separateent fluidators to appraise proposes and manuassociate barachieve prices. Sotira has brawt this process online and apvalidates suppliers to clear up originateory much speedyer.
Sotira accuses a monthly fee for access; it also gets a percentage of revenue from each transaction on its platcreate.
While Sotira is advantageous for suppliers and buyers, Bahsin says Sotira is also conceited of its ability to discdiswatch up affordable access to premium products that people may otheradviseed be unable to access. For instance, Sotira toils with a lot of CPG beverage brands that finish up offloading their excess originateory to discount grocery stores.
“In the economy right now, where you currently see at how rapidly grocery prices are increasing, these are the categories devourrs buy the most,” Bahsin said. “There is so much appreciate in discdiswatching affordable access to these items. A lot of the buyers we toil with are in agricultural areas. They’re in areas that they may be more subpar, where devourrs actuassociate depend on purchasing from over-stock stores, enjoy they won’t buy from a Whole Foods, they’re purchasing from a discount grocery store.”
Bahsin also remarkd that since California has passed legislation to stop grocery stores from dumping food and beverages, Sotira can now approach these companies and advise them that there’s a taget for their surplus originateory.
Sotira set ups to enbig beyond food, beverage, health, and cosmetics in the future and shift into the apparel space. The company is getting interest from brands that want help moving their excess cloleang and shoes, Bhasin said.
Sotira’s pre-seed funding integrated participation from Unnormal Ventures, Night Capital, K5 Global, Ritual Capital, and others.
