Startup Snapcart's co-founder and CEO Teresa Condicion quits to start new venture

CONSUMER analytics startup Snapcart's chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder, Teresa Condicion, has resigned amid differences on how to take the company forward.

In the company's statement on Thursday, Ms Condicion said: "My goal is to drive data innovation to solve the many challenges of the industry. I decided, and we agreed amicably, that I can better achieve my goals with a new venture."

Her resignation was effective Sept 30. She has handed the reins back to Reynazran Royono, a co-founder of Snapcart who was CEO prior to her appointment.

Snapcart provides data-driven, real-time shopper and consumer insights for brands and retailers. It collects purchase data and gives shoppers cashback for scanning their receipts on the app. The receipts are then analysed by the firm's proprietary technology based on artificial intelligence (AI).

The startup operates in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Brazil. It launched in Singapore last February, after a US$10 million Series A funding round led by Singapore venture capital Vickers Ventures Partners and including investors such as SPH Ventures and Wavemaker Partners.

Ms Condicion started as chief data officer at Snapcart after a long tenure at Procter and Gamble as head of South-east Asia consumer and retail analytics.

As chief data officer, she led a team of data scientist to develop over 400 machine-learning models that read, structure and predict the content of receipts to deliver data analytics to clients at five times the speed of incumbents, Snapcart said.

Ms Condicion was named CEO in 2019 to drive the startup's focus towards full automation to improve margins.

"Our effort on automation and cost reductions over the past eight months puts the company on a path to scale," Ms Condicion said on Thursday.

Having left Snapcart, she will be starting a new venture called Shoplinks, which will enable smart, offline one-to-one marketing by providing secure data sharing, data matching and AI-enabled engagement platforms to the retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries.

"The use of data in the CPG and offline retail space is in its nascent stage, there are immense opportunities," Ms Condicion noted.

"The data available tends to be siloed, unprocessed, and not positioned to compete in the data-driven world. Brick-and-mortar retailers and brands could do more by partnering together and combining their resources to better compete," she added.