DataWeave, a provider of AI-powered Competitive Intelligence as a Service to e-commerce businesses and consumer brands, announced the launch of its new online platform to track and report on the stock availability of consumer essentials across hundreds of U.S. stores. The insights provided on the platform will help consumers shop at well-stocked stores nearest to their respective locations.

“As concerns surrounding the COVID-19 crisis heighten, the resulting buying frenzy has triggered an unprecedented and sustained surge in demand for consumer essentials in the U.S.,” said Karthik Bettadapura, Co-founder & CEO at DataWeave. “Therefore, consumers venturing out to stores often run into empty shelves. Our new stock availability platform is aimed at helping shoppers gain easy access to information on the availability of critical items during this period of uncertainty.”

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DataWeave’s platform displays the number of products in-stock and out-of-stock at various supermarkets across hundreds of ZIP codes, and tracks leading retailers like Walmart, Target, Safeway, Kroger, and several more. The product categories presently monitored are bottled water, disinfectants, hand soaps, hand sanitizers, toilet papers, and wipes. The underlying data is captured from the ‘in-store’ sections of the websites of each retailer and is refreshed periodically.

“Since retailers frequently update their websites with products available in-store, it presents an opportunity for us to leverage our technology platform to aggregate this information at scale and make them available to shoppers across the country. We are closely monitoring the regions most impacted by COVID-19 in the U.S. and will regularly expand our coverage of ZIP codes to include emerging areas,” said Karthik.

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Apart from shoppers, the platform also enables brand manufacturers to swiftly identify and replenish out-of-stock products. This addresses the growing need for brands to better align their supply chain operations with the rapidly changing demand patterns across U.S. regions.

DataWeave also recently announced a limited-time, no-cost offer to provide brands with insights on stock availability, price gouging, unauthorized third-party merchants, and the presence of counterfeits, enabling them to protect the interests of their online marketplace customers.

“The current level of stock shortages is likely to last for several weeks as anxious consumers continue to shop in large quantities, overwhelming supermarkets and inconveniencing shoppers. Launching our platform is an attempt to contribute in a small way to the overall community as it navigates unchartered waters,” said Karthik.

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