Despite the rapid growth of artificial intelligence across industries, many retailers still rely heavily on spreadsheets and fragmented workflows to manage some of their most critical business decisions. Pricing strategies, inventory forecasting, assortment planning, and promotional analysis often remain manual, time consuming, and difficult to scale, especially for mid sized retail businesses that lack access to large enterprise systems. Helsinki based retail technology startup Retailgrid is aiming to modernise those workflows with AI driven automation while preserving the flexibility retailers are already familiar with.
The company has raised €358,000 in a pre seed funding round led by Finnish B2B SaaS investors Ali Omar, Henry Nilert, and Pekka Ylitalo, with participation from Innovestor Angel CoFund.
Modernising Retail Operations
Retailgrid develops an AI powered workbook platform focused on retail pricing, forecasting, and assortment planning for mid market retailers and FMCG companies.
The company says many retailers continue relying on disconnected software systems, spreadsheet based workflows, and external consulting projects to make operational decisions around pricing, promotions, and inventory management. While enterprise retail software platforms exist, they are often expensive, complex, and resource intensive for smaller and mid sized organisations to implement effectively.
Retailgrid aims to bridge that gap by offering a cloud based platform that combines the familiarity and flexibility of spreadsheets with AI driven analytics, automation, and data intelligence.
Combining Spreadsheets With AI
The platform integrates directly with existing retail infrastructure, including ERP systems, ecommerce platforms, and market data feeds. Retail teams can then generate pricing strategies, demand forecasts, assortment recommendations, and promotional analyses using natural language prompts instead of manually building spreadsheet models from scratch.
Unlike fully automated black box systems, Retailgrid says its platform allows users to maintain visibility into the underlying data and logic supporting AI generated recommendations. The company believes this transparency is especially important for retail teams making high impact commercial decisions.
The startup has also developed pre built AI agents focused on specific retail use cases, including price optimisation, sales forecasting, assortment planning, competitor monitoring, and promotion analysis.
Solving a Common Retail Problem
According to Maxim Morozov, one of the most common challenges retailers describe is that their existing spreadsheet workflows are becoming increasingly difficult to manage as product catalogues and operational data continue growing.
Morozov explained that many retail teams still rely on Excel because of its flexibility and familiarity, but the scale and complexity of modern retail operations are pushing those tools beyond their practical limits.
Retailgrid’s goal, he said, is to provide retailers with a system that feels as intuitive and adaptable as traditional spreadsheets while offering the scalability, automation, and intelligence required for modern data driven decision making.
Focus on Mid Market Retail and FMCG
The company primarily serves omnichannel retailers and FMCG brands operating across industries including grocery, fashion, beauty, DIY, and specialty retail.
These sectors often manage large product assortments and rapidly changing inventory dynamics while needing to react quickly to pricing trends, consumer demand shifts, and competitor activity. Retailgrid believes AI powered operational tools can help these businesses improve decision making without requiring major infrastructure overhauls or expensive enterprise software implementations.
Expansion Plans Across Europe
The newly raised funding will support continued development of the company’s AI Grid platform while helping Retailgrid expand its customer base across Europe.
The startup also plans to grow both its engineering and commercial teams as it continues building AI driven operational tools tailored for retail organisations.
As retailers increasingly seek ways to combine automation, forecasting, and pricing intelligence with existing operational workflows, platforms capable of integrating AI into familiar business processes are attracting growing attention across the retail technology market.
By positioning itself between traditional spreadsheets and heavyweight enterprise systems, Retailgrid is aiming to become part of a new generation of AI powered tools designed specifically for practical retail decision making.