Plug and Play’s CEO Corner: Ruchika Kumar, SKU IQ

Meet Ruchika Kumar, CEO of SKU IQ, a tech-start-up participating in business accelerator Plug and Play's retail accelerator that matches retailers with complementary technology solutions.



What does your company do?

SKU IQ is indexing the world's in-store inventory and providing a platform for retailers to easily showcase what they have in-store. Consumers today want to know what's in-store before they go shopping. But that information is not available online with any sort of accuracy. SKU IQ extracts real-time inventory availability information by integrating with in-store POS systems.



With multiple POS integrations, SKU IQ enables retailers to manage their physical and digital stores together as one business. The customer benefits with a seamless, omnichannel retail experience that can include nontraditional checkout options that require real-time inventory, e.g. "in-store pickup," "same-day delivery," and "reserve in-store."



How do retailers leverage your solution?

SKU IQ can enable any retailer to progress to an omni-commerce experience. Connecting a retailer to SKU IQ is simple and can often be completed in seconds with no additional hardware costs or system disruptions.



Once connected, SKU IQ pulls inventory and sales information from the POS, normalizing all data and making it possible for retailers to push more products online with a click of a button. The software continuously syncs sales across channels, so as items sell in-store, they are deducted from a retailer's website, and vice versa.



Furthermore, retailers can see a consolidated view of sales, customers and analytics (in-store and online, together) from SKU IQ's dashboard. It's a unified view of business and an enormous time-saver.



What is your background as CEO and what led to the development of the company?

We have so many on-demand apps for finding restaurants, hotels and cabs, but there is no equivalent for retail. Shopping is still inefficient in 2015. In addition, 90% of sales still occur in-store, but most of the average retailer's in-store inventory is invisible online. Real-time inventory transparency can change this story. With more than seven years’ experience at Accenture in systems integration combined with retail experience at Karen Millen and Selfridges, I knew I could change the story.