Andavi Solutions has acquired Infilect, a Bengaluru-based AI technology company, bolstering its sales execution platform with image-recognition and agentic AI capabilities built specifically for retail and on-premise channel execution. The deal, announced November 4, pairs Andavi's salesforce automation tools with Infilect's ability to analyze photos and videos from retail shelves, displays, menus, and backbars — delivering near-real-time reads on SKU facings, pricing, share of shelf, out-of-stocks, and competitor activity.
Why the Deal Matters
For beverage and consumer packaged goods suppliers selling into foodservice and retail, field execution has long been a blind spot. Route representatives conduct manual store surveys, log observations by hand, and report back through static dashboards — a workflow that creates latency between what is happening at the account level and what management can act on. Infilect's platform closes that gap: a rep captures a shelf or backbar photo during a store visit and receives prioritized next-best actions almost immediately, while district and regional managers gain aggregated visibility into execution gaps across their account base. The technology has direct relevance for on-premise operators managing distributor relationships, menu compliance, and back-bar placement across multi-unit footprints.
Integration and Roadmap
Andavi and Infilect have already begun technology integration, and combined solutions are currently in production with beverage alcohol customers — a channel where shelf-level compliance, promotional compliance, and competitive share of display are critical performance metrics. Infilect will continue to operate with its existing product, team, customer relationships, and service commitments under the combined company. Nina Vellayan, CEO of Andavi Solutions, framed the acquisition as a step toward a more intelligent execution layer: "Infilect gives our customers better visibility into what is happening in the market and helps turn those insights into action." Infilect co-founder and CEO Anand Prabhu Subramanian said the combination accelerates Infilect's ability to scale its agentic AI roadmap globally.
Competitive Context
The acquisition arrives as technology vendors across the food and beverage supply chain race to embed AI into distributor and field-sales workflows. Platforms competing in trade promotion management, direct-store-delivery optimization, and retail execution have increasingly positioned computer vision and large-language-model-driven recommendations as differentiators. For beverage suppliers — particularly in the fragmented beverage alcohol tier, where three-tier compliance and distributor motivation are perpetual challenges — real-time shelf intelligence represents a meaningful step up from periodic audit programs. Andavi's move signals that agentic AI, capable of not just surfacing data but recommending and automating the next commercial action, is becoming a baseline expectation rather than a premium feature in sales execution and trade technology. Operators and distributors evaluating beverage channel management tools should expect competing platforms to follow with similar capability investments in the near term.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
